


Twist and Growl

by goingbadly



Series: Twist and Growl [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-14 05:12:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 8
Words: 28,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goingbadly/pseuds/goingbadly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"What if Sebastian and Jim had met in highschool?"</p><p>Jim is the frustrating scholarship student that Sebastian doesn't notice except to pick on, until the day he realizes there's something much darker and much more threatening behind those big dark eyes. Not that he noticed Jim's eyes or anything. Because he's totally not gay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. /Wrong./

**Author's Note:**

> http://goingbadly.tumblr.com/post/70225371433/http-archiveofourown-org-works-833140-twist-and Twist and Growl now has a cover! Look at that.

There’s a ripple of hushed giggles when Sebastian hits the scholarship student in the back of the head with a paper football. It sticks in his messy black hair, causing another muffled burst of laughter, before a frustrated hand swipes it away. Sebastian grins. _All the way across the class_ and _the teacher didn’t notice. Ten points._

The other kid turns around to spot the culprit. Under that messy fringe of black hair, narrowed eyes dart over the class until they light on Sebastian; leaning forward over his desk, readying another paper football. There’s a silent exchange; a glare from the black haired boy that clearly says, _get fucked,_ answered with a grin that by senior year everyone has recognized as the first sign Sebastian is itching for a fight.

The boy at the front turns back around. Sebastian attributes this to his own bad-ass reputation. He flicks another piece of paper, which goes sailing over the classroom with unwarranted grace and ricochets off its target’s neck. Under the table, one of the boys on the football team gives Sebastian a low-five, while at the front of the class, the scholarship student stiffens. His skinny back straightens as he takes a deep breath. It’s almost possible to see all the bones of his spine, like piano keys, pressed against his button-down shirt.

 Sebastian, feeling like he’s on a roll, readies another paper football, lines it up, aiming for the spine this time. Unfortunately, that’s when the musty teacher up at the front turns back from the chalkboard. She’s looking for him immediately –in the staff room you could always count on hearing about something Sebastian Moran had done that was, at best, mildly destructive.  Better not to give any thought to the worst of the stories.

 ” _Mister_ Moran,” she barks, croaking voice out of place in the drowsy classroom. Some students have to lift their heads from their desks, blink sleepy eyes and reorient themselves. “If you’re finding this _so_ boring, perhaps _you’d_ like to explain to us the decline of the Ottoman Empire preceding the First World War?”

 Sebastian looks up, startled, but not at all properly defensive. His grey eyes are unconcerned. Today they look blue, innocent, wider than they are. Without a moment’s thought, he rattles off – “Couldn’t compete with the British Empire or Germany. Fell behind, got left behind.” He pauses, mainly for dramatic effect. “The sun never sets on the British Empire!” Sebastian raises a fist in mock solidarity and half the class loses their focus to giggles again.

 “At least you’re paying attention,” Mrs. Duggan says tiredly, and shoves her glasses back up her nose. She turns to the black board, sore in her too-tight shoes. “Now, if we look at economic strength into the early 20th century –“

“ _Wrong._ ” The voice carries in the classroom, incongruously deep for how small the speaker is. All eyes refocus on the scholarship student. He’s tapping a pen on his desk in irritation, sharp little clicks that contrast with the way he’s got his chin cupped, disinterestedly, in his palm.

 Mrs. Duggan is at least as startled as her students. “Sorry…?” She says, and blinks owlishly at him. From the back of the class, Sebastian stage whispers,

 “Here goes midget Einstein again,” but he’s ignored with perfect aplomb.

 “It’s _Jim_ ,” The black-haired boy insists, spitting out the words like bullets, “And the Ottoman empire _wasn’t_ in decline. You can stop teaching us lies _anytime._ The pre-war days _boosted_ the Ottoman empire's overall wealth and military strength, not ‘fell behind got left behind.’ Which isn't even _first form_ grammar.” He twists to glare at Sebastian again, large dark eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. Mrs. Duggan flaps her hands nervously in the air as the class erupts into murderous whispers.

 “We've covered quite thoroughly in class that – “

 “Some people just can't tell when they should be quiet.” Sebastian cuts her off loudly, eyes locked on Jim’s.

 “ _Some_ people can't tell when they are _wrong_ and simply following the herd. You’re just a cute little _sheep._ ” The playful lilt in Jim’s voice gives way to a deep growl, and his shoulders pull back angrily. Sebastian’s eyes narrow in response, judging. His hands are slack on the paper football but when he makes up his mind his grip is tight and it crumples into garbage.

 “Increase of production. Still a decrease of power. Doesn't matter if they got _better_ they were proportionally _worse._ Doesn't matter how fast you can run a lap if you can't outrun the defense.” The moment of silence between them is tense and the more suggestible students are holding their breath, watching Jim’s face twist in fury as Sebastian’s voice gains a note of goading triumph. “ _Fell behind._ Got _left behind._ Idiot.”

 While name calling is usually against school policy and no teacher in their right mind would allow it so loudly across the classroom to the victim’s face, Mrs. Duggan feels about ten steps behind in the conversation. She gapes at them, mouth working in surprise as she tries (and fails) to find something to say before the bell rings and she loses control of the class entirely. “We'll - we'll pick up here tomorrow then –“ She starts, but it’s completely buried in the noise of zippers and shoved-back chairs as the class stands up en masse.

 Neither boy stands. Jim looks like an angry cat, brows tight over his implacable glare. Sebastian isn’t much better, the easy challenging grin lost, staring at Jim like he’s the only thing in the room; the only _frustrating, stupid, punchable_ thing in the room. In the chaos around them, the eye contact is a silent, ominous note.

 Sebastian is jostled from behind by one of his friends and the moment is lost. He snags his bag from the floor and they pour out of the class room in a noisy mess, voices raised in condemnation. One of the girls ever-present at Sebastian’s side tosses her hair imperiously and tells him, “You should do something about his smart mouth,” as Jim pushes past them. The comment is directed more at Jim than Sebastian but the blonde boy looks thoughtful anyways. Grey eyes completely colourless as they follow Jim down the hallway, he says,

 “I think you're right,” and turns to whisper something hurriedly in the ear of a tall dark-haired striker against the lockers beside them.

 

 

 

\-----------

 

Despite his height and the notoriety he’s gained, Sebastian is good at disappearing into a crowd when he needs to. He never loses sight of the tousled black hair of the boy in front of him as the halls begin to empty back into classrooms, staying in the thickest crush of people.  When Jim turns down an abandoned hallway leading to the math wing, Sebastian grins and picks up the pace. If there’s anything he loves more than a deserted hallway and no witnesses, it’s what he can do with people caught in one.

 When he’s sure there’s no one around he slows down, lifts his chin, and calls out, “Charity case.” His voice echoes slightly in the hall, but there’re no classes in the math wing on Friday and he’s reckless enough not to care if someone walks by. His movements have gone soft and measured, anticipation apparent in his lazy tension.

 Jim stops, those bony shoulders squaring, but he doesn’t turn. “Moran.”

 “Oi, public school, show some respect when I'm talking to you.” He closes the distance between them with two long strides and digs his fingers hard into Jim’s shoulder. Under his grip, muscle shifts against bone.

 Rather than properly scared, though, Jim just looks exasperated when he turns. There’s a glint in his eye that if Sebastian was less blind in his self-assurance would be a surprise. He doesn’t look like prey the way he did a moment ago, when there were people around.

 “And what do you want?” He asks, brows arched in an expression of polite surprise that pisses Sebastian right off. Not realising that it’s not the level but the basic premise of physical intimidation that’s failing, Sebastian grabs two fistfuls of Jim’s uniform and slams him up against the lockers. Taller, he’s able to lift Jim with minimal effort. Jim’s worn-through sneakers dangle three clean inches off the ground. His lack of apparent worry about this makes something deep in Moran’s gut twist and growl.

 “What made you think you were good enough to back talk me?” Sebastian snarls, right into his face, sharp canines showing as his muscles go rigid with the effort of holding Jim aloft.

 Jim’s expression is mercurial, dark and raging in a second. “What makes you think you’re good enough to keep an illegal firearm in your locker?”

 Sebastian thinks he hides the drop in his stomach of horrified surprise well. His eyes widen and then narrow, but it’s the only shift in his expression. He certainly doesn’t put Jim down. “I don't have a gun in my locker, what have you been smoking.” His voice doesn’t raise on the question, and it damns him. Jim grins, and the liquid changing of his expression makes him look much younger than he is.

 “Nothing, unlike you. You reek of gun oil and cigarette smoke. Aren’t cigarettes _prohibited_ , Sebby?” He barely gets the last syllable past his lips before Sebastian pulls him a little off the wall and slams him back to drive the breath from his lungs. It’s a hot puff of air between them, effect lost when Jim just _giggles._

 “Most underclassmen would piss their pants if they knew about that. And you're alone in a hallway with me. I could leave you in three pieces and nobody would say a thing.”

 “You cooooould,” Jim pulls the sound out like taffy on his tongue, and his head sways, shut-eyed, a snake about to strike. He pauses, and plays his trump card with them open. To see Sebastian’s face. “And then I can tell everyone what REALLY happened to the missing girl... “ He lets his voice trail off into a sweet little smile that traces a shiver of fear down the length of Sebastian’s spine.

 “Stop spewing nonsense.” Sebastian watches him closely, ignoring the terrified _thump-thump_ of his own heart. Of all the secrets he had, all the things he’d shoved behind the mischievous, good-hearted mask, _that_ was the one that made him panic.

 “Right.” Far from afraid, as he should be – Sebastian’s hands still white-knuckled in his uniform jacket – Jim looks knowing and triumphant.  “Shame I know where she is. Hidden not even a mile from her house. Cruel.”

 In Sebastian’s head, he hears her again. Her name was Kate. She had beautiful eyes, and she had begged, _please, god, please, I’ll do anything,_ but there hadn’t been anything he wanted her to do.

 The blood on the grass had looked black. Her hair had tangled, and her eyes had stared off into the sky, like she was praying.

 Sebastian should have felt bad. It might have been easier, if he felt bad.

  _Oh please, please, don’t, stop, please._

 Before he knows it Sebastian has taken in a started breath, stepped back, hands unclenching and dropping to his sides. His eyes go wide and they look blue again, round in shock. “You _know_. How is that _possible_?”

 Jim continues as if he hasn’t spoken, dropping lightly to his feet without a stumble to show weakness. “ _Oh_ , and _by the way,_ DO your mates know about your homosexual tendencies? Because I thought it was frowned upon to spy in the showers.”

 Sebastian feels his chest go tight. All of a sudden, there isn’t enough space in the deserted hallway. It’s like something has unfolded from that tiny skinny body, something dark and menacing, something that’s looming over him even as Jim has to tilt up his head to study Sebastian’s face. He can’t think. He can’t hold on to the mask he’s clutched for so long, trying to look normal, trying to be safe.

  _Please, no, please._

 “I assume you're going to blackmail me.” His face has gone cold without him noticing, losing the practiced humanity, and he’s one blood-spattered cheekbone away from looking like a murderer again. Looking like he did in the mirror that night.

 Jim just smiles at him, unconcerned. He reaches up and pats Seb’s cheek, ignoring the flinch. His hands are cold. “Be good, _Sebby,_ ” he says, and something swings sickeningly in Sebastian’s stomach. Then he’s turned, picked up his bag, and started off down the hallway – confident strides that make his heels click on the floor and Sebastian wants to follow, wants to chase him down, wants –

  _Please –_

But he doesn’t do anything but stare until Jim turns the corner and he finally feels able to take a deep, shuddering breath.

 

 

\-----

 

Sebastian is in English class when his phone goes off. He’s answered a question about Hamlet. Wrongly, as it happens. His interpretation had apparently missed several miles of proximity to the mark. It takes him a while to figure out that the noise the teacher is trying to locate is coming from his bag. At some point, his text tone has been changed from a discreet vibration to a frankly _adorable_ kitten’s meow. He flips it open long enough to read **Careful now. If you think too hard you might have an aneurism. -Jim Moriarty x** and then resolutely flips it shut again. When the bell rings, he finally has time to text back. He chooses his words carefully.

  **Die in a hole. -SM**

 He shoves his way out of class at the front of the pack, not talking to several people who really should have rated some acknowledgement. Sebastian Moran, not popular but always welcome, good for a laugh or a bit of fun or a dangerous joke, looks altogether too serious today. He doesn’t know it yet, but the mask is slipping. When he responds to a shouted joke with a barely-audible grunt instead of his usual grin, indignant whispers cross the hall back and forth behind him.

  **That reminds me of a certain someone~ -Jim Moriarty x**

_Please, no please -_

 Her quiet memory is louder than any the students around him, effortlessly drowning them out. Sebastian stops dead in the hall. Some girl in her first year almost walks into him, not paying attention, and recoils back to avoid a good-natured punishment. She trips over her own feet and ricochets off a locker, leaving a red welt on her forehead. Sebastian never notices.

  **Where are you. –SM**

There’s a delay, but eventually he receives an image. It’s the school, seen from a copse of trees beside the football field. The angle is low, half-obscured by grass, and the photo is badly contrasted so the sky is a surreal purple-blue. Sebastian doesn’t care about quality. It’s enough to get a location from. He works his way through the halls like a shark through a school of fish, students parting to get out of his way because he’s big and he’s strong and occasionally when he doesn’t grin his practical jokes are not very funny at all. When he gets outside, he drops his bag carelessly to the ground and starts to run.

 True to the promise of the photo, Jim is sprawled out between the trees in the dappled sunlight. He shades his eyes with a hand when Sebastian pants to a halt above him and growls out, “Get on your feet.”

 “Mmm... no.” Jim stretches like a cat. “I'm rather comfortable~”

 “I'm not going to kill you on your back, so _get on your feet._ ”

 Jim shuts his eyes, not in the least surprised or threatened. “Like I saaaaaaid.” He wriggles his hips just a little in the grass, a movement Sebastian finds far too interesting to bear thinking about.  “ _Com_ fortable. Come down here instead.” It’s altogether too much. Something snaps and Sebastian is a blur of movement, knife snapped out from his back pocket and lunging for Jim. It’s like one second he’s standing, relatively calm, fighting the urge to kill Jim with reasonable success. And the next thing he knows he’s straddling the other boy in the grass, gripping his wrist to force it painfully above his head, setting the knife to his jugular.

 If he looks close enough there’s a moment of illusion where he thinks he can feel Jim’s pulse leap through the blade. Then Jim ruins it all with another silly giggle.

 “Sebby is upset!” He says, with the sing-song tone of a childhood tattle-tale. It takes a millisecond longer for his face to contort and his voice to go back to a deep growl. “Do it. I _dare_ you to end me right here, in cold blood.” He presses, manic, up into the knife. “END IT!” Sebastian loses the opportunity to shocked stillness, and Jim sighs like he’s disappointed before shoving him violently back. He stumbles, and ends up on his ass with the knife falling from his fingers to be forgotten. Jim rises over him, brushes off his clothes and then fixes Sebastian with an absolutely frigid look of distaste. “ _Coward._ ”

 “What do you _want_ with me?” The words jump out of Sebastian’s mouth before he can stop them. He wishes he could take them back, but he can’t, and Jim is smiling again.

 “You see, I find you interesting. And I'm rather tired of being bored in this place. You answer my texts, Sebby-dearest, or I’ll be disappointed in you.” His manic smile gets wider, and Sebastian thinks of sharks and crocodiles, and cold reptilian hearts that don’t feel anything. “And _answer my texts._ That’s all!” The cheery little wave Jim gives is obviously dismissal, and, god help him, Sebastian obeys.

 

 -----------


	2. Things Sebastian Won't Actually Do (And Some He Wishes He Could)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sexual tension ahoy. Jim Moriarty is turning out to be not at all what Sebastian Moran expected.

By one PM Friday afternoon all anyone is talking about is how murderous Sebastian had looked earlier and how Jim has a thin, scabbed line of red on his throat. Only Sebastian knows that Jim pressed upwards into the knife. Only Sebastian remembers the lick of fear that came with seeing that animated face twist sideways in murderous disappointment.

Sebastian is quietly disgusted that not a _single_ person has questioned the popular explanation. He hates them for believing the lie so easily, for not being able to see past Jim’s mask when his is coming so quickly undone. Jim is managing both to ignore everyone and play the sullen victim at the same time, and Sebastian, despite his anger, can’t quite make it to the end of the day without wanting to talk to _someone_ about how _stupid_ people were being.

**i cant believe theyve swallowed it -SM**

**They're idiots. It doesn't surprise me at all. -Jim Moriarty x**

**one look at you should be enough. too proud to beg or cry. youd die first. –SM** He types the message with his phone concealed under his desk, not needing to look at the keys. He means it as a threat.

**Yes. I would. Are you offering? -Jim Moriarty x**

**do you really have a death wish? -SM**

**my parents are out of town this weekend if your free. -SM** The thought makes him grin, looking up over the class while the teacher drones onwards. _Jim,_ when no one can interrupt them, brought back down where he belongs. Jim _afraid._ Jim’s broken body, limp on the hardwood. He would not be half as frightening or full of unpleasant surprises once he was dead. Sebastian’s smile goes predatory. He’s yet to notice the crack in his mask, except that his face isn’t as sore as it usually is from holding his fake grin in place.

It’s not until a good thirty seconds of waiting for a return text that Sebastian comes to a sudden realisation. His face falls and he hastily sends a third - **not that you were right about the gay thing**

He can almost _hear_ Jim’s self-satisfied chuckle, knowing as soon as he sends the text that it sounds defensive. Time drags itself forward, and he gets more and more keyed up, wound tight around Jim’s answer like a coil. Five minutes until the bell rings. Three minutes until the bell rings. Two. _Is he going to reply at all?_ One.

**Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe. If you’re so eager. –Jim Moriarty x**

For a hopeful second, Sebastian thinks he’s going to ignore the desperation of the last text. Even at this point he should know better than to expect Jim to overlook a weakness.

**AND, I'm always right about everything. -Jim Moriarty x**

Sebastian curses and drops his head forward onto his desk as the bell rings.

\----------

Sebastian’s door is unlocked, not that it matters to Jim. As he opens it without knocking Sebastian sees him tuck a lock-picking kit back inside his pocket, slim fingers smoothing the fabric on top of it so there’s no tell-tale bulge. He looks around the ground floor curiously. It’s an old, sprawling house, brightly lit in the sun and dark as the devil’s ass at night, as well as an unabashed mess. Sebastian is perched on the railing at the top of the stairwell, half-sitting on the newel post.

Jim looks up. It’s unexpected. Most people _never_ look up, but when Jim’s done surveying the ground floor his eyes find Sebastian on the railing like it’s no surprise at all. He doesn’t even have the good manners to jump. “How awfully dramatic of you,” he says, deep voice making each vowel smooth and round. “You can come down now. I’m impressed, _promise._ ”  Sebastian scowls, but drops from the bannister to the stairs and stomps down to meet him. There’s a pistol shoved into the back of his pants and knives in every available pocket, although he’s trying _very_ hard not to think about why he feels the need to be so heavily armed.

His feet carry him just a little too close to Jim. They stand in the foyer, uncomfortably close, then Jim’s eyes do a quick up-and-down flick and he smiles brightly. “Easy, tiger. What did you need all those knives for? It’s just little-old- _me_.” He looks at Sebastian like a child who’s told an adorable joke and Sebastian grits his teeth.

“You did come here for me to kill you.” He tries for threatening, voice rough. Jim looks _delighted._

“You're not _actually_ going to do it,” he tells Sebastian, and steps lightly past him into the sitting room. There’s two knives in the wall at chest height and one wedged into the edge of the high ceiling that Sebastian hasn’t been able to reach since he tossed it up there ages ago. He supposes he’ll have to find some way to get it out eventually.

“No one knows where you are.” Sebastian watches as Jim perches on the arm of the couch, refusing to react as he purposefully tumbles backwards and bats his eyes up at Sebastian, prone on his back. “I could.”

“Euuugh. Of _course_ you could.” Jim rolls his eyes, open mouthed, looking _bored._ “But you won't. You're scared. You’re a little scaredy-cat.”

 “You’re not here for the pleasure of my company.”

“Oh, that’s clever. You’re clever.” Sarcasm drips from each word, like honey. Jim’s face twists again, and Sebastian wonders if he’ll ever learn to predict those sudden changes of expression. He stands over Jim lying on the couch in silence for a long moment, until he’s sure that he’s got the right question.

“What are you going to use me for?”

“Oh, hm. Protection, mostly. You can be my eyes and ears. Aaaaaand, If you disappoint me, I will make you my _lackey._ ”

For a long minute Sebastian just stares at him in appalled silence. “Your – ” Then he sits down heavily in the armchair across from the couch. “They'd murder me. I'd be hamburger. There isn't a kid at this school who wouldn't have a go at beating my face in.” His hand tightens on the arm of the chair, fingers lost in the stuffing ripped out of a gash in the upholstery.

“It's a good thing you can handle yourself, isn't it?” Jim is bored, picking at his fingernails idly. “Besides. That's only a punishment.”  When his voice isn’t flat, it’s teasing; voice light, singing the words. The effect is lost on Sebastian, who continues as if Jim hadn’t spoken. He leans forward and there’s a loud noise as he rips a handful of stuffing clean out of the chair.”

“It's one thing for you to be a piece of white trash - for me to _serve_ you – ”

“ _Excuse me?_ ”

Moran continues as if Jim hasn’t shoved himself upwards to stare in outraged disbelief across the living room. He ignores the raised voice and the way Jim’s face has fallen, once again, into those surprisingly dangerous lines of murderous rage. “It'd be even worse, because I'd be one of _them_ serving _dirt._ I'd get more shit than you do for existing because I'd be _lowering myself._ Not even to your level. That would be far enough. I'd be _beneath_ you, and that's _inexcusable._ ”

He isn’t used to people being faster than he can react to. When Jim suddenly uncoils and leaps across the room, his first response is to recoil helplessly, not providing any defense. Jim’s quick white fingers shove into the back of his pants for the pistol and before Sebastian finishes drawing in air he’s got the safety off and the muzzle shoved under Sebastian’s chin.

It’s been warmed by his skin, but it’s hard and implacable. It settles in the soft spot behind the bone of his jaw above his throat, and Sebastian swallows. “ _Excuse_ me,” Jim repeats, all sunny politeness. “Were you speaking?” He jabs the gun in and Sebastian feels his heart thud in his ears. His chin rises, obedient to the push. Jim leans in closer. This close, it’s possible to see the start of stubble on his chin. The cracks where the skin on his lips is dry. Sebastian feels his grip tighten on the chair, almost like his hand belongs to someone else. “If I _wanted,_ Sebby darling, I could _take_ you and _break_ you. I can do _an-ny-thing_ I want and you can do _absolutely nothing_ about it.” His voice is deep and soft and it seems the whole world is silent except for that voice. “Before you assume you’re _better_ than me, I want you to _remember who you’re TALKING TO!”_ He stays polite to the end, where he loses it. Screams directly into Sebastian’s face, scant centimeters between them. Sebastian’s chin rises a little more, away from the gun – and up towards Jim. His hands are white with the force of his grip and although he’s trying, he’s failing to form words even in his thoughts.

“You’re not a tiger, Sebastian.” Jim’s dark eyes are locked on his face, intent, and Sebastian feels like he’s being dissected. “You're a _kitten_ that hasn't learned to properly use its claws.” He thumbs the safety back on and the click echoes through the room like a gunshot. For a drawn-out instant, they are both still. Sebastian stares up at him, lips slightly parted with the force of his breath, and Jim glares back down. The gun presses in tighter, and it seems less deliberate this time – Jim is leaning slightly forward, and there’s a moment where Sebastian’s stomach drops out completely and he thinks absolutely nothing at all. He wonders frantically where his thoughts went. His eyes flick down to Jim’s lips. He opens his mouth to speak, unsure what he’s going to say, but needing – _wanting –_

Too late. Jim is changing again, throwing the gun in Sebastian’s lap and pulling himself back with an exaggerated frown. Still not able to think, Sebastian grabs his wrist, tightening his grip to feel the shape of Jim’s bones. “If you think you can come into my house and threaten me you are _mincemeat._ ”

One look at him and Jim’s laughter echoes off the walls. “Oh _kitten_. That's aDORable, it really is.” Sebastian is struck with the sudden urge to _disassemble_ him.

“I think we've _covered_ that I won't kill you.” His grip tightens over Jim’s wrist, where he can feel his still-steady pulse. “That leaves a fuck of a lot of ground _uncovered_.” He stands, pulling Jim in closer with no effort at all, until Jim has to crick his neck back to keep smiling at Sebastian.

“So you would _hurt_ me, Kitten?” His voice is low and smooth, a teasing promise. “Push me to the ground and _beat_ me until I begged, until I _cried_?” He steps even closer, chests flush. Sebastian pulls back on instinct. “Would you _hit_ me, _cut_ me, with your pupils all blown and your breathing labored? Until you're seeing nothing but red through a cloud of _lust_ and then finally act out those homoerotic fantasies that you have?” His hips hit Sebastian’s and Sebastian takes a reflexive breath, his grip tightening. He’s unable to stop the images Jim is putting in his head, unable to fight the crawl of _want_ over his skin.

Not going to deny it he settles on evasion, and tells Jim, “You wouldn't beg.” It doesn’t seem to have any effect. Jim’s shark smile widens.

“Oh but I _would_ , Sebby, _darling_. ‘Cause I can get you so worked up you have no control of your needs anymore. I would _beg_ just to see the adorable _squirming_.” The words are an overload. Sebastian’s mind is, without his consent, supplying images that quickly overwhelm rational thought. Jim losing control, his eyes wide and wet with tears, his hair dishevelled. Jim on his knees, swaying, begging. Jim, promising to do _anything,_ still wearing that secret smile that says _I know more than you and the least of me is still out of your reach –_

Something snaps in Sebastian and he throws Jim’s wrist aside, shoves him back, and takes a swing. Jim lets it hit. His head snaps around at a sickening angle, and when he looks back at Sebastian, his smile is split-lipped and his eyes are half-dazed.  More images flood Sebastian’s mind, violent, half-formed lustful things that make his heartbeat speed. Unable to fight the adrenaline rush or the thrill, he lashes out – sending a kick at Jim’s knees that would bring him down if Jim wasn’t faster than Sebastian to begin with. He sidesteps, Sebastian stumbles, and then Jim’s in close again, hissing in Sebastian’s ear. “Naughty, naughty, Kitten. You're starting to disappoint me~”

But Sebastian refuses to be goaded, channels his frustrated desire into another punch, fast and low, aiming for Jim’s stomach. Jim swings to the side, grabs his arm, and uses Sebastian’s momentum to pull him forward, off balance. Sebastian trips forward into Jim’s shoulder and their lips are close, close enough that a slide of tongue would make contact. He holds very still. “Violence is never the answer... unless I tell you it is.” Jim grins, Sebastian’s eyes catching the glint of white teeth between his pink lips and he very suddenly can't get enough air. He can smell the blood on Jim's lip so close to his and it seems heady, dizzying, and he feels half-drunk.

“Then... what you want is...”

“Oh, _that._ Just _behave_ , kitten, could you?” One last teasing glint of teeth, one last breath shared between the two, and then Jim shoves him back. His head games have worked just fine. Sebastian is growling, his blonde hair out of place and his eyes blown. He looks half-wild, murderous, barely controlled.

“ _Fine._ ”

Jim’s tongue flicks out, catches blood off his lip. The deep red over the pink of his tongue is the exact colour of sin and Sebastian is fixated like a hawk watching a rat. “ _So_ oooo predictable. Sit, kitten, before you work yourself into a frenzy.” Sebastian collapses backwards into the chair before he realises how easily the obedience comes. He sees it in Jim’s eyes and flinches. Jim looks pleased, self-satisfied, as he throws himself back on the couch.

There’s a long silence. Sebastian is staring. Jim is calculating, eyes intent despite his relaxed posture. Finally, Sebastian shuts his eyes to calm himself, opens them again, and says, “You’ll have the bruises to match your story now.”

It’s the right thing to say. Jim laughs. His laugh is high and carefree, at odds with his deep voice. “I will, won't I? Every performance needs good props.”

“You’re lucky my public...persona... still somehow ended up with a habit of viciousness.” He leans back in the chair, watching Jim with heavy-lidded eyes.

“Even the best disguise is a self-portrait~” Jim tells him, mocking.

“After school I'll join the military.” He shuts his eyes. The sentence has the well-worn feeling of something he tells himself too often. “Won't have to pretend there. Men like me get shot and die young. It's what we're good for.” Sebastian half-shrugs, a toss of his shoulders that looks disinterested to hide the old hurts. “The world doesn't know what to do with born killers. Thank god for the military.”

“ _I_ know what to do with them.” Jim’s sing-songing words again, playful. “Use them for _killing_.” The last word is another deep growl. Sebastian is beginning to like the rhythms of his speech, but he can’t help a sharp bark of surprised laughter. He leans forward to grin at Jim, half-convinced he’s joking.

“Use them for –You're _fifteen._ You're not some sort of _criminal mastermind_.” Jim just smiles, like Sebastian has played into a joke he doesn’t understand.

“Oh, you’re so sure.” Sebastian’s grin falters as he thinks, and then it gets wider.

“No. I’m not sure at all.” They pause for a minute, and Sebastian’s grin almost looks like the one he uses in public when he’s taking something as a challenge, getting ready to play a joke he considers clever. Inside his chest, however, a delicious warmth spreads. The military had always been the only option, but this, _this…_ “I want to work for you.”

“No. I don't _trust_ you.” Jim, playful.

“I'll earn your trust.” Sebastian, serious.

And then all of a sudden all the playful changeable twists are gone from Jim’s face and he stares at Sebastian like Sebastian is dirt on his shoe. “I don't trust anyone. _No._ Never. Thank you for _offering._ ”

The warmth in Sebastian’s chest disappears in a rush and leaves him cold. He thinks he’s angry.  But his voice comes out desperate and he realises as he speaks that it sounds like a plea. “I don't want to die in some god-forsaken desert because I don't belong anywhere else! I'm better with a rifle than any man you'll ever meet, I'm strong, I'm fast, you think I'm dumb but I'm smart, any job, I don't care, I'll end up killing people anyways - I'm the _best_ \- I _deserve_ better than that death.” It’s all a rush of indistinct fear, baring a hurt he’s kept hidden for so long the ache is like a part of him. Jim doesn’t react. His face is still that closed-off coldness that makes Sebastian cringe.

“You're begging me like you think I feel any amount of sympathy for you.”

Sebastian’s chin raises defiantly, pride stung. “You _should_ feel sympathy for me. You're for an early grave too. They'll kill you because they don't know what to do with you, same as me. Just I'll come home with a medal saying how brave I was and you'll suicide by cop.” Jim laughs and it’s a bitter sound that’s far too old for him. But he doesn’t change his answer, and Sebastian feels sick and dead and suddenly wants him gone. “Get out of my house.”

Jim tilts his head. He no longer looks like he’s enjoying winning. “It hurts you, doesn't it? Realizing I'm not what I appear to be and _wanting_. And then I turn you down and it makes you _sick_ because the _charity case_ told _you_ no.”

“Shut up.” Sebastian looks at him, stunned into anger. He hadn’t even been _thinking_ about the roles they play in public and for Jim to say – to think that he cared about _money,_ at a time like this – it’s not _right._ “It hurts because you - _you_ \- saw through me effortlessly, like no one else ever has, you _figured me out,_ stripped me of secrets, and now you're just going to discard me. You should _understand,_ you _do_ understand, and you still –”Jim tumbles off the couch and to his feet. It’s a miracle of physics, how he manages to look boneless and still rigid and distant. He heads for the door and Sebastian searches for something, _anything,_ that will make him stay. He’s forgotten that only a moment ago he told Jim to leave. Now he _needs_ to convince him. Jim’s hand is on the doorknob, when he stands and desperately blurts out, “You wanted to kiss me earlier. What changed?”

Jim turns back from the doorknob to blink at him for a surprised moment, and then he laughs. The sound is bitter, harsh, and mocking. “Just when I thought you couldn’t get more ordinary, _wow!_ You did it!”

But there’s something there, underneath the mocking, and Sebastian pursues it doggedly. “You're trying to shove me away now. I know I'm not ordinary. _You_ know that. When you came over, you wanted to tease me. Push my limits. And now something's ruined that game for you. What was it?”

Jim scowls at him, but at least that dead expression is gone. “ _You_ ruined it. You ARE ordinary. Just like all of them.” Sebastian thinks hard. He’s not as quick, or as sure as Jim, but he makes it – in the end. Jim goes to turn the doorknob in the moment of hesitation, and then Sebastian speaks with quiet certainty.

“ _I’ll earn your trust._ ” He sees it hit. He’s right. Jim knows it. There’s a moment of unguarded reaction before Jim sneers and Sebastian is sure that for once, he hasn’t been stupid or ordinary.

“Looks like you had a moment of clarity. I’m ever so proud.” His hand closes on the doorknob again and he is moving fast and vicious, throwing the door open and slamming it behind him. He’s gone before Sebastian can speak, leaving the whole house to echo with the loss of his presence. Sebastian, never one to miss an opportunity to be petty, throws a lamp at the door after him and it shatters with an unsatisfying sound. There’s a dull ache in Sebastian’s stomach. He wants Jim back. He wants him dead. He wants him to hurt in exactly the way Sebastian hurts right now, wants him desperate, wants him wounded.

Most of all he wants to punish Jim for understanding him and leaving anyways. Around Sebastian, the empty house looms upwards, silent.

And Sebastian is alone.


	3. Bruises on Jim's Skin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m beginning to believe,” he says, his heart pounding in his throat with the risk he’s taking, “You’re leading me on. Do you want me or not?”

Monday morning Sebastian is asleep on his desk in History, head pillowed on his forearms. The teacher doesn’t bother to disturb him, but mid-way through the class one of his friends, the dark-haired striker he’d spoken to about Jim, leans over and pokes him in the side. Without looking and still half-asleep, Sebastian catches his hand. The motion is reflexive. He turns his head to the side without raising it, and the other boy grins. “Just because you’re fast on the field,” Sebastian says, low, so no one else will hear, “Doesn’t mean you’re _faster._ ” His voice is rough. He sounds like he’s been chain-smoking. He _has_ been chain-smoking, come to think of it.

“Late one, huh?”

“Brian. Shut up.” Sebastian lets go of Brian’s hand and buries his head back in his arms. He hasn’t slept properly all weekend and this is _not_ what he needs right now.

“Sebastian. It’s _me._ I know Rebecca’s been begging for it, come on, tell me she gave you a call – she did, didn’t she?”

Sebastian thinks of all the ways he could kill his long-time friend _right now._ None of them are undetectable. He doesn’t want to be arrested.

“I said, _shut the fuck up._ ”

“She _did_ and she told you not to tell anyone, _Jesus._ ” Brian’s voice is filled with admiration. “Bet you stole some alcohol from your parents and gave it to her hard. Christ, Sebastian, how do I get your life?”

Between his folded arms, Sebastian’s voice comes out cold and deadly. “Keep talking. And I will kill you.”

Brian attributes this to a hangover.

\-------------

There’s a steady stream of whispers that follow Sebastian across the cafeteria as he ignores his regular table and drops into the seat across from Jim.  The pointed stares he gets are decidedly unfriendly, noting his shadowed eyes and jotting down the weakness in his hunched shoulders like a swarm of piranha focused intently on him.

He firmly decides he doesn’t care.

Jim has an apple in one hand and is scratching at it with his too-short fingernails. He’s carving something into the glossy red skin on the side Sebastian can’t see, focused and determined. He doesn’t look up and his face is half-hidden, but Sebastian knows he’s tired just from the way he’s holding himself.

“Go to hell,” Jim says, in a very reasonable voice.

“You look like crap,” Sebastian tells him. Jim’s nails stop, and his lips tighten. His face goes a little white – anger – and he gives Sebastian a look. It’s the first time he’s looked up. Sebastian likes it; even if Jim is clearly trying to communicate _I’m going to skin you alive_ with his eyes.

“People will talk,” Jim shoots back. “Get away from me.”

“People are already talking.” Jim’s hands start moving again, horizontal scratching now, little red flakes of apple skin dropping to the grey plastic table. Sebastian watches, half-hypnotised. “There’s an address on file for you with the school,” he says, finally. Jim’s fingernails dig into the apple, a record scratch, startled into making long gouges. He makes a noise like an angry cat, baring his teeth at Sebastian. Sebastian watches this curiously. “It _is_ technically public.”

“Are you trying to _blackmail_ me?” Jim isn’t loud, but his voice is rough and sibilant and Sebastian can feel the rage in it like a slap. He leans back and enjoys it. Jim gets tense when he’s tired, apparently, and Sebastian likes being able to get to him. Privately, however, Sebastian is wondering why Jim is so concerned with someone seeing his address.

“No. No one knows anything about you. I was curious.”

“Get _rid_ of it.”

“I already have.” Sebastian gets the feeling Jim wouldn’t normally blink twice in surprise, widen his eyes, and look so damn _cute._ Not when he’s angry, anyways. But Sebastian files the expression away, something else new to know about him. “I didn’t want anyone else to know.”

Jim gives him a look of absolute, utter disgust, like Sebastian has just admitted to unforgiveable perversion. Without saying anything further, he picks up his bag, stands, and leaves. The apple clenched in his fist sheds another fleck of skin onto the floor, and Sebastian brushes the ones on the table off to join it as he watches Jim leave. Against the beige vinyl tiles, they look like a spatter of blood, jarring and vibrant.

People are still staring. Some of them at Jim, some of them at Sebastian. Some people are silent, eye-brows raised. Others are whispering furiously. One of the soccer players has leaned across the table to Brian and is speaking quickly, jabbing his finger at Sebastian as he talks. Brian has a steely look in his eye as he watches Sebastian and nods in agreement.

\-----------

It starts half-way to English. Sebastian’s path through the hallway is blocked by a boy who’s had his nose broken too many times, so when he looks down it at Sebastian the effect is slightly ruined by a lump. He wears a torn-up jean vest and holds himself like he thinks he’s strong. Sebastian is unimpressed.

“What do you want, Reever?”

“Saw you talking with the charity case at lunch today, Moran. People are saying some weird things.” His smile makes it obvious that he’s enjoying this. Sebastian looks him over coolly, and thinks to himself all the ways he could shatter that nose completely. His silence unnerves Reever, who forces a laugh. “Gunna have people thinking you’re _gay_ for him if you keep this up.” Around them in the hall, people slow down mid-step to watch, sizing the pair up in case something happens. More than a few of the younger students are aggressively hoping something _does_ happen. Sebastian is tall, but the boy facing him is built thick and wide like a brick house. Some of the people whispering might be laying bets.

There’s no need, Sebastian knows. The other boy is strong. Not a soccer player, rugby, used to hard knocks and a drunken brawler outside of school. His waist is only saved by a beer-gut by his high school metabolism. _When he’s thirty, he’ll wear stained-wife beaters and break his wife’s cheekbone during the football game. When I’m thirty I’ll be the best gunman this side of Russia, or I’ll be dead._ Sebastian’s chin raises, and he gives the other boy a condescending look that’s nicked straight from Jim.

“If I was,” he says, voice sharp and mocking. “You’d only care because you’d want to jerk off to it. Isn’t that right? After all. You’re the one who gets half-hard in the showers.”

Reever goes purple with rage. It’s a satisfying sight. Sebastian has a split second to appreciate it before Reever takes a swing, a haymaker, full force of the larger boy’s weight behind it. To Sebastian, it might as well be happening in slow motion.  The punch is thrown sloppy, and when he ducks under it Reever carries through too far and leaves himself open. Sebastian drives his fist into the soft vulnerable skin of Reever’s stomach, underneath his ribs. The impact must jar something important, because Reever grunts and spins to face him, a lumbering bear of a man.

Sebastian feels a rush of warmth and calm inside him, a pure elated joy like a hawk in flight. A belonging.

Sebastian kicks for his knee, in the side, the same thing he’d tried on Jim. Jim was lightening, untouchable. Reever is a mountain trying to dodge the wind. It lands solid and his knee crumples inwards, taking him down. Sebastian steps lightly forward as the other boy drops and drives his forehead into the fragile cartilage of Reever’s nose.

There’s a satisfying _crunch_.

The on looking crowd gasps as one. Reever goes over backwards, flattened face already a mess of blood, unconscious before he hits the ground. Teachers are pushing their way through the crowd, hindered by the sheer mass of students. Sebastian stands still for a moment, breathing heavily, letting himself relax. Then, before anyone can get close enough to touch him, he turns on his heel and stalks off. The look on his face is disturbingly satisfied.

It doesn’t last long. Three steps into his English classroom, his eyes find Brian, seated in a desk at – for once – the front of the class. He has his elbows on the top, hands clasped right-over-left under his chin so the knuckles on his right hand are visible. This is intentional. He is _gloating._ The skin over his knuckles is split and bruised, but not nearly enough to explain the amount of blood on them. He’s looking straight at Sebastian with a little half-smile, and as the teacher walks into the room he casually puts his hands underneath his desk.

Sebastian is frozen in the door way. The teacher practically has to shove him out of the way to get in. He understands the message in Brian’s little smile, because cruelty is a game Sebastian taught him to play.

_Jim._

Before the teacher can pull him aside to send him to the office, (breaking the nose of another student being apparently against school rules) Sebastian throws himself back into the hallway. He pulls his phone from his pocket as he goes, and starts checking the places Brian usually dumps victims.

**where are you? -SM**

He hits send with his heart on the keyboard and it’s a full agonising minute before he gets a response. There’s no one in the halls but him, and the school feels surreal and distant like a nightmare.

**Got bored. Went home. –Jim Moriarty x**

**brians got blood on his knuckles. tell me where you are. –SM**

Sebastian curses Jim’s pride, Brian –  in general – and himself for leaving Jim alone. He should have known. He checks the maths wing, and the dumpsters behind the science building. The long pauses between Jim’s responses drive him a little mad. He’s got a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach that he only vaguely recognizes. He’s _worried._

**I told you. I left. –Jim Moriarty x**

Sebastian swears, loudly, and heads for the bathroom just outside of the gym. He remembers Brian leaving a first-year student there last winter, head bashed so hard against the wall the tiles cracked. They’d had to call an ambulance. Sebastian wonders what he’ll do if Jim is hurt badly.

_Kill Brian._

The thought is instant, absolute, and without any qualms whatsoever. Sebastian hears in it the finality of fact.

Outside the bathroom, there’s a blob of red on the floor underneath the garbage can. As Sebastian gets closer, it solidifies. On the side tilted towards him, white flesh browned with oxygen, a heart has been scratched roughly out of the skin. No valentines heart, but a painstaking recreation of valves and aortas, detailed despite the method used to create it. Sebastian wonders how long Jim was in that lunch room. _Waiting?_ There’s long gouges off the side. Jim, surprised.

**I don’t believe you. –SM**

He sends it and then puts his phone away, pushing the door to the bathroom open. There’s a scrambling noise. A stall door lock clicks shut. Sebastian sighs. “Jim.” No response. “Jim, come out. Please.” He sits down on the tiles in front of the only locked stall, noting with a rush of rage that there’s blood on the wall. “There’s no one else here.”

Jim opens the door slowly, and Sebastian searches him for injuries with desperate eyes. Jim’s hair is matted with blood where his head must have been cracked against the wall. He’s hunched forward protectively over ribs that are either bruised or broken. His face is bruised, but his glaring eyes are clear and just as imperious as always. There’s no desperation in those eyes, no weakness, and Sebastian takes great pleasure in the way he straightens to cover his injuries when he realizes how intently Sebastian is looking.

“Don’t just _sit_ there,” he snaps, and Sebastian smiles broadly despite himself. This makes Jim angrier, which makes Sebastian even more pleased. _Vicious cycle. We’ll probably end up killing each other. Excellent._ “We’ve got to get out of here. I bet _you’ve_ been stupid enough to fight back.”

Sebastian shrugs good-naturedly, not denying it, and stands. “I don’t suppose you’ll let me carry you,” he says, just to piss Jim off. It works. Jim’s eyes narrow into slits underneath the bruises and he hisses that angry-cat sound. “Didn’t think so. Shall we?”

Jim pushes past him without another word and Sebastian, still grinning, follows. They make it out the front door because Sebastian insinuates to the secretary who’s supposed to stop them that once he takes Jim to a doctor he’ll come back and play doctor for her. She even goes as far as to call them a cab when Sebastian gives her a promising smile. Too easy.

Jim looks impressed against his will.

In the cab he’s silent and Sebastian tries to follow his lead, fore-finger tapping at his leg with frustrated energy. He runs the starts of sentences through his head, but nothing sounds right. The cabbie doesn’t talk, and the radio is off. Jim is staring out the window, face distant. The silence grates on Sebastian’s nerves.

_How are your ribs?_

_Tell me who hurt you._

_Tell me so I can hurt them._

_Tell me so I can protect you._

He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Jim doesn’t seem to notice. Finally, unable to bear it anymore, Sebastian curls his hand into a fist and forces out, “Brian and who?”

Jim turns away from the window to give him a scathing look. Sebastian shuts his mouth again, and mentally kicks himself. Of course Jim wouldn’t tell him.

When they pull up to the house Sebastian pays cash, too much cash, tipping well just because he doesn’t want to wait for change. He can’t quite ignore the way Jim gets out stiffly to protect his ribs from being jostled, or the colour of his hair dark and sticky with blood. He wonders if Jim knows what a mess he looks like. _Probably not. He’d never let me see if he did._ Sebastian is polite enough to ignore the wince Jim can’t help as he starts up the stairs to the door.

“On the couch,” Sebastian tells him. He gets a glare in response, but Jim sits anyways, so it doesn’t matter. Sebastian ducks out of the room for the medical kit, leaving him there, mainly so he has some time alone to gather his courage. Coming back, kit in his hands, he averts his eyes and says brusquely, “Shirt off.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I don’t care if you think I’m gay.” Sebastian sets the medical kit down on the table, unzips it, and goes rooting through for bandages in case Jim needs them. “I need to see your ribs.”

“I _know_ you’re gay.” Jim’s hands don’t even twitch towards his shirt buttons. He just watches Sebastian with a blank, expressionless stare. “I’m not _stripping_ because you tell me to.” Sebastian glances up, meets Jim’s eyes, and has to look away.

“Me or a doctor,” he says gruffly, and drops the bandages on the couch beside Jim. Jim’s look turns contemplative, and when he sees the stubborn set of Sebastian’s jaw he gives in, playing it off like it doesn’t matter to him after all.

“If you _want_ it that badly, _Sebby_ , of _course._ ” Jim loosens his tie with short quick tugs as Sebastian moves to stand in front of him, waiting. Sebastian leans over to pick up the bandages. They’re rough in his hands, and he grabs them too tight and twists them to remind himself that Jim is undressing for _medical_ attention. Medical attention he needs because of Sebastian.

Guilt is a weight heavier than anger.

Jim drops the tie at Sebastian’s feet and his sure fingers start on the buttons of his shirt. He strips it off with casual efficiency, shrugs it over his shoulders with a single lithe motion and as he lets it fall beside the tie Sebastian is half-tempted to thank him for not making the process into a tease. Of course, that’s before he sees Jim’s torso.  Against his pale white flesh the violent blooms of purple bruising show starkly, and it is almost – but not quite – possible to count his ribs. In small places, over his sides, the bruises are almost black. To Sebastian, they look like an accusation; a brand of shame left by his friends, because he approached Jim.  It quashes all thoughts of what Jim would look like with bruises from Sebastian on that flawless skin. He bows his head and lets himself grip the bandages tightly for comfort one last time before he speaks again.

“Arms up.” His voice is tight, and he clears his throat before continuing, hoping Jim won’t mistake it for another _gay_ thing. It isn’t. Not like this. “Take deep breaths.”

Jim, for once, is silent. And _obedient,_ more the shock. He breathes deep and easy, and Sebastian sighs with relief. There’s a wince of pain Jim can’t hide, but nothing more serious. And it gives him time to get up some guts, so when Jim exhales Sebastian has enough courage to kneel down between Jim’s legs and place his hands tentatively over the bruising.

Jim inhales sharply. His skin is so hot beneath Sebastian’s palms that Sebastian knows his fingers must be cold. He fights the temptation to pull away, the nervous-indecision and uncertainty, and stays absolutely still. When Jim adjusts to the touch, rolling his eyes as if to say _get on with it,_ Sebastian lets his hands warm against Jim’s ribs and feels over the worst of the injuries, searching for the hard edge of bone. He doesn’t find it.

“Fine,” Sebastian says, finally, and there’s relief in his voice. “You’re fine.” His hands drop from Jim’s chest, but he doesn’t move from where he’s kneeling. He finds himself unable to meet Jim’s eyes. There’s a long pause where he stares at the fabric of the couch between Jim’s legs and lets his hands twist uselessly in his lap. When the silence stretches past the breaking point and Sebastian can’t stand it anymore, he says, “This is my fault.”

It’s quiet and muffled by his lowered head but Jim hears anyways. Of course he hears.

“What is?”

“ _This._ ”

“They said I was turning you into a fag.” Jim isn’t mocking, for once, and Sebastian appreciates it. He feels fragile, as if his heart is bruised in the same pattern as Jim’s ribs. A rough word would be painful, now, a lilting tone of Jim’s voice could cut right through him. His thoughts slide sickeningly, dizzy, drunk on guilt. When they catch on something, a plan, a thought, he clutches it desperately.

_What if it wasn’t Jim they thought turned me gay? What if it was someone else, someone expendable –_

“Who else in our school is gay?” For once Jim doesn’t follow the logical leap. He smirks, but there’s no comprehension in his eyes of what Sebastian is now planning.

“Brian.”

“Wouldn’t work.”  Sebastian looks up, finally. “If someone else was to take the brunt of ‘turning me gay’ they'd shift focus from you. If I got caught –“ There’s a moment of disgust where his throat works and he can’t get the words out, but he forces through, clenching his fists. “Letting one of them – _blowing_ someone –“

“ _No._ ”

“It could work.”

“I said _no._ ”

Sebastian shifts uncomfortably on his knees, trying to ignore the sick feeling in his gut at the thought of what he’s proposed. He chokes it down and stares up at Jim, refusing to give an inch. “Why the hell not. It’d get them off your back.”

“It’s a _stupid_ idea, and it will get you _killed._ ” Jim glares back, but the sickness fades in Sebastian. _You’d care if I was hurt._ Jim looks just as cat-angry as he did before, but Sebastian is beginning to see that the vicious wrath is covering something sweeter.

“I can take it,” he says anyways, because it’s not a stupid idea and they both know it. “I’m not letting you do this alone.”

“You don’t have a _choice,_ ” Jim hisses back, leaning forward. The motion puts him startlingly close, and Sebastian pulls back. Almost losing his balance. Realising where he is.

_On my knees between his legs. Talking about blowing someone._

_Fuck._

He stands abruptly. Jim’s face, for a second, flashes surprise and understanding. Neither of them says anything. Jim leans down, picks up his shirt, and pulls it back on. Before he can stop himself, Sebastian blurts out, “Will you stay tonight?”

“Why the _hell_ would I do that?” Jim is caught somewhere between shock and outrage. Sebastian hopes the temptation he can read in Jim’s tense shoulders isn’t just wishful thinking.

“It’s a long walk.”

“Shut up.”

Another silence as Sebastian watches Jim do up the buttons of his shirt. When he’s caught staring, he shrugs, not discomforted. “You intended originally to frustrate me sexually. Don’t be surprised it worked.”

“I intended originally to _kill_ you.” Jim throws the words down like a challenge. Sebastian’s eyes widen.

“ _What?_ ”

“Oh _please_ , Sebby, don’t look so surprised. After all the wonderful things you convinced your friends to do to the charity case, I was going to have your _skin_ as a _lampshade._ ”

The world lurches around Sebastian and he stares in horror at Jim, now fully dressed and altogether too composed. Then, replacing the cold horror, a hot rush of embarrassment floods him.

“So when I asked you to trust me, the reaction was _disgust._ I was being fooled too easily.” He turns away, struggling, unable in the end to overcome the guilt. Even knowing that the brief flashes he’d seen of humanity and friendship were only the cleverest parts of Jim’s mask - _I’m still responsible for those bruises. Even if he didn’t mean a word of anything, it doesn’t change what I’ve done._ He turns away to hide his face, not that he thinks it’ll fool Jim. “You’re still welcome to stay. My room’s upstairs. Other than that, the house is yours.”

“I _didn’t_ kill you,” Jim tells his back, frustrated that he has to say something so obvious. “I only kill the _ordinary_ people.”

Sebastian straightens his shoulders, bracing himself against the weight of another brilliant manipulation. “You’ve delighted in telling me how ordinary I am. Don’t stop now.” He heads for the stairs without looking back. Leaving Jim there on the couch.

Jim doesn’t follow, but he speaks louder. “I have them killed, really. I _never,_ never, _ever,_ get involved myself. I just _don’t_ get my hands dirty, _Sebastian._ ”

This takes a moment to process. When it does, Sebastian has his hand on the newel post. _There’s never been a buffer between us. He’s always come after me alone. I’m special. I’m an exception. I’m –_ Sebastian turns back to Jim.

“I’m beginning to believe,” he says, his heart pounding in his throat with the risk he’s taking, “You’re leading me on. Do you want me or not?”

Jim is completely expressionless, an iron mask, a perfect poker face. “What would you do if I did?”

“It wouldn’t mean you’d have me.” Sebastian tries for calm, fails, but manages ‘restrained.’ “It wouldn’t change anything. I’d want you either way, but, I’d never – I wouldn’t assume desire alone was enough. All that changes is that I know.”

Long, long silence.

Long enough to grind Sebastian’s teeth together, dry out his mouth, make his fists clench. Long enough that the quiet and the expressionless calm in Jim’s face has his heart back thumping in his temples, in his ears, until he feels like he’s vibrating and he’ll tear himself to pieces without an answer.

And then, without warning, Jim smiles and trills at him, “Touch me without my permission, dearest, and I’ll cut off your fingers, but oh _yes,_ do I _ever._ ”


	4. Blood on Sebastian's Lip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jim and Sebastian's sexual tension finally comes to a head, but only /after/ Sebastian tries to do something truly stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This gets a little dubconny, fair warning is fair

Sebastian wakes up alone on his uncovered mattress at five forty-six in the morning, and is unable to shut his eyes again.

He stares at the half-lit ceiling. The sun hasn’t broken the horizon outside his window, and his room is desaturated in the pre-dawn light. Everything looks soft and woollen, and Sebastian is desperately tired even though he knows he won’t sleep anymore. Jim’s bruised ribs glare in his mind on waking, but asleep, it was a different face –

_Please, god, please, don’t don’t don’t –_

He fumbles for his phone.

It takes four text messages for Sebastian to get what he needs planned. In the green glow of the screen his face looks satisfied, if a little resigned, like a man preparing to eat a burnt meal in the hopes of a promising desert.

Sebastian rolls out of bed, makes a face at the cold floors under his feet, and goes to make breakfast.

\-------------------

Jim is curled up in a nest of clothing and blankets on the floor by the couch. The tufts of dark hair just visible under the bottom of an old canvas jacket are the only hint that it isn’t just a heap of rags. Sebastian hadn’t expected him to stay but when he’s drawn to the kitchen by the sizzle and smell of bacon cooking, wrapped in a comforter, Sebastian gets a golden feeling that lasts all through breakfast.

Of course, after breakfast, everything goes to shit.

Sebastian is cleaning up the dishes when he glances at the clock and realizes he’ll be late for school. Or, rather, late for what he has to do at school. He dries his hands hurriedly, and goes to find Jim. Bored with the washing up, Jim has sprawled out on the couch in the living room – on top of his nest, this time. His fingers tap at the buttons on his phone a little too fast, just this side of hyperactive. “I'm leaving,” Sebastian says, but Jim doesn’t look up. Sebastian continues gamely. “Don't feel compelled to lock up, but if you nick anything from my room I'll have one of your fingers.”

“Why are you going at all?” Jim drawls, eyes still locked on the keys.

“I have something to arrange.”

Sebastian turns away. As he does, the tapping noise of Jim’s fingers stills. There’s deadly silence in the room. Sebastian hopes his back is impenetrable. He hunts around for books and pencils, doing his best mimicry of his normal routine.

“You’ll arrange _nothing,”_ comes the deep growl behind him, “I know what that means.”

“I'm late on my homework for English. I'm going to get an extension.”

“Don't _lie_ to me. Don't you _dare_ try and shift the gay blame, kitten. I'll end you.”

“What is your _objection?!_ ” Sebastian doesn’t intend to turn around and shout at Jim, but it happens anyways. His fists are frustrated knots at his sides. _It’s a good plan and he knows it, the stubborn ass. Did he want to think of it himself?_

“You're an IDIOT and it won't WORK!” Jim is shouting back, screaming really, rubbing sleep out of his eyes with a curt gesture in order to glare more efficiently.

“I'm not going to stand by while you take punishment for something _I did_ -“

“You seem to have forgotten who made the first move in this little game of chess.”

Sebastian’s mouth sets in a stubborn line, and he does an uncannily good imitation of a mule balking. “You can't stop me.” Jim’s expression goes correspondingly murderous.

“Is that really what you think?” It’s low, a challenge; _how stupid are you willing to be?_

“I think it's none of your goddamn business who I fuck or where I fuck them. You know my idea'd work. It would protect you.”

“You're _not_ to go through with it.”

They stare at each other in heavy silence, and Sebastian is the first to break. He looks away, drops the things he’s been collecting roughly to the floor. A pencil bounces and goes skittering off beneath the chair. Lost forever. Sebastian watches it and tries to tell himself he won’t sulk. He’s sulking anyways already, frustrated that Jim won’t even _consider_ –

Jim is in an infinitely better mood all of a sudden, although whether it’s Sebastian’s sullenness or the discarded items motivating his grin is unclear. “I thought you were going to school?”

“Specifically the locker rooms,” Sebastian doesn’t expect it to be a surprise, so he tries to match Jim’s teasing tone. “Patrick from math class will be disappointed.”

“YOU ALREADY MADE PLANS?!”

If he thought Jim was screaming before it is nothing, _nothing_ , to the shrill shriek of rage that follows Sebastian’s admission. Jim is on his feet in a hot second, hair and eyes wild. Sebastian, caught out with no time to prepare, just raises his chin defiantly and says nothing.

Not that he has much of a chance to speak.

Jim is a hummingbird, smooth movements so fast they look like vibration, or like no movement at all. Sebastian blinks and Jim is in front of him. There’s a blur of a fist and then a bright, blank explosion of pain as Jim’s knuckles make contact. Sebastian’s nose is on fire. His ears are ringing. He misses just as completely the sweep of Jim’s leg that takes him to the floor. He lands heavy on his back and tenses, about to surge upwards.

That’s when Jim’s heel stomps down into his solar plexus, and the breath leaves his lungs. Sebastian lets it all go in a rush, then chokes, fighting panic as he can’t get enough air.

“Don't you _FUCKING_ move!” Jim shrieks, “How dare you! How _dare_ you!” Sebastian concentrates on being able to breathe again and stays silent. Clutching his stomach, he glares up at Jim without an _inch_ of remorse in his eyes. He doesn’t even look cowed when Jim pounces on him, grabbing his chin and jerking his face upwards. “Don’t _ever_ try that again,” Jim snarls, with a snap of his wrist that shakes Sebastian’s head.

Perversely, this makes Sebastian even less contrite. “Disobeying you or – “ he has to pause to suck in a breath, the insulting tone hard to reach when his lungs are only now beginning to feel full enough again “- Hooking up with someone else - _boss_ -“

“ _Disobeying_ me. I don't care if you think it would have worked.” Sebastian opens his mouth angrily to protest this and Jim lets go of his jaw, pulls back, and punches him to shut him up. There’s no heat or emotion in it. At his worst, Jim is always calculating.

It’s effective. Sebastian shuts up. A thin trail of blood trickles out of his nose.

Jim gets off him with a snort of derision that makes it clear just how unimpressive Sebastian has been. “I’m going to school,” he says, “And since you obviously _can’t_ handle the responsibility, Sebby, you are staying _here_ or I am making you into _shoelaces._ ”

“You said you'd let me _protect you_ ,” spits Sebastian from the floor.

“When you’re not a good kitten,” Jim trills back, with a coquettish grin that sets Sebastian’s teeth on edge, “You don’t get to have fun.” He bats his eyelashes, and skips away to gather his things.

Sebastian pulls himself up to a sitting position and tries not to think about murder. He watches the small hurricane of movement that is Jim getting ready with a detached sense of unease.

_You really won’t be safe without me, you know, they’ll eat you alive._

_The only bruises on your skin should come from me._

But Sebastian doesn’t say anything, not even when Jim slams the door behind himself a little too hard, and then the chance to speak is gone.

\--------

All day long Sebastian feels like he’s drunk one cup of coffee too many. He’s nervous and fidgety. His chest is tight, uncomfortable, a sick feeling that he vaguely understands is his heart speeding with the stress of an adrenaline rush that doesn’t seem to end. _Jim is in danger._   He organizes all the weapons, alphabetically, according to how many ways you can kill someone with them, and then alphabetically again when the second classification ends up being more trouble than it’s worth. He washes the dishes, scrubs the counters, cleans the floors, and manages to get all the knives and darts out of the walls of the living room. Nothing to be done about the holes.

When that’s all done, he glances at the clock.

Noon.

_Fuck._

_This is going to take forever._

It’s another fifteen minutes before he can convince himself that he will _literally, seriously_ _die_ if he doesn’t text Jim.

**how long will you be? -SM**

Agonizing minutes pass. Twelve thirty. Twelve forty. Twelve forty-five.

**Not sure, we’ll see. –Jim Moriarty x**

Sebastian’s fingers hesitate on the keys. He types in _are you_ , deletes it, then _has anyone tried_ , but really, would Jim tell him that? Eventually, because it’s better than silence, he sends **text if you need me. -SM**

**I'm fine. –JM**

This, for some reason, makes Sebastian even angrier than no reply would have. **you wouldnt tell me if something was wrong** , he sends, and hurls his phone at a particularly offensive couch cushion.  It lies there for a full ten seconds of petulant sulking before he gets up and fetches it. After all, Jim could text back.

By the end of the school day the house is absolutely _spotless_ and Moran is back to pacing. He tosses his phone into the air every three steps exactly, catching it in the middle of the fourth.

 _Do I text now? Do I wait? How long will it take him to get here? What if he goes home?_ Sebastian’s thoughts are an ouroboros, eating themselves, and they’re deeply, desperately, out of his control. _Can I leave? He'll be angry. Is he okay? Should I text?_ Back around again, until Sebastian thinks he’s going mad. He feels a sudden sympathy for animals who chew off their own legs to escape traps.

**I'm going home. Don't wait up. -Jim Moriarty x**

This time his phone hits the wall, and it shatters.

He stares at the broken pieces for a few seconds before they really register, and then growls low in the back of his throat. _Enough,_ he thinks, _is **enough**_. It takes him less than ten seconds to get his shoes on and the door locked behind him. He has Jim’s address, and if Jim is texting him to tell him not to come, well – he’s not getting those instructions now.

It’s a long walk, but Sebastian needs it. It calms him down. By the time he’s left his own affluent neighbourhood and started wandering through the truly grubby parts of town, he’s back in control again. His face is locked into the charming grin that hides all his real emotions, and his eyes are bright and interested as they scan the dilapidated houses around him.

He wonders if he’ll recognize Jim’s house. Half the buildings don’t seem to have street numbers and those that do are often just spray-painted numerals next to the doors.

 _Crack-shacks_ , he thinks, and then the circle of worry inside his head starts up again. _Jim_ lives _in this place._

It’s outside one of the better houses that he pauses. A little green townhouse, once, it now sports raw wood over the windows and a distressingly rickety staircase on the front porch. He looks down the street, counting from the last house with a legible number. _5568, 5570, 5572…_ A door slams in front of him, and he looks back to the green townhouse.

Jim is standing on the front porch in a t-shirt with no shoes on, looking equal parts stunned and furious. The door is shut firmly behind him. “What the _fuck,_ ” he hisses, not loud enough to draw attention, “Are you doing _here?_ ”

“I was curious,” Sebastian tells him. There’s a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach when he spots new discolorations on Jim’s arm. _Forearm. They dragged him. It’ll be worse under the t-shirt._ To keep himself from demanding names, he settles for, “You've got new bruises.”

Jim scowls. “Get lost.”

Another pause. There’s a needle dangerously close to Jim’s bare foot. “Who’s the addict?” Sebastian asks, and a storm settles in Jim’s expression. “Not you,” he says, with that clear certainty he occasionally reaches. “Family member. Parent?”

Jim jumps off the porch, narrowly avoiding the needle and bypassing the broken stairs altogether. He shoves Sebastian away from his house, with both hands. Somewhere in the movement his anger has been lost, and he looks desperate and scared. Sebastian grabs his wrist before he can pull back. “Get away from me!”

“What are you so _afraid_ of?” Sebastian asks him, eyes searching his face. Jim is wearing a furious mask. “Stop _hiding._ ”

“I'm not _hiding,_ ” Jim insists quietly.

“You _are._ You're hiding whoever the addict is in there. Your new bruises. That's why you didn't come back, isn't it? You're hiding _weakness_ however it occurs. Do you think I can protect you without knowing where you're vulnerable?  There is no one else in this town, _no one_ , that can see you for what you are. Let me.” Sebastian’s face, too young to know how to lie, is written over with admiration and fear and respect. “Don't _shove me away,_ ” he says, and it’s a plea and a shout of defiance.

Jim’s eyes are unreadable. Sebastian only lets go of his wrist when it’s obvious he’s not pulling away. There’s another tense pause, standing too close, staring at each other. To both of them, the whole world is dim except the space between them, which sparks bright and vibrant with unsaid words.

Jim, slow, deliberate, turns and goes back inside. He leaves the door open.

Sebastian follows him past the couch where an older woman lies prone. There’s a thin stretch of leather still loosely tied over her arm and a halo of needles on the floor. Her knuckles brush the carpet, and Sebastian can’t tell if she’s breathing. Jim pays her no attention. She’s part of the furniture. Upstairs there is a mattress on the floor and there Jim is waiting, the only room in the house not strewn with the trappings of addiction.

Sebastian shuts the door behind him with a click.

Instead of needles and lightly toasted spoons, the floor is covered with paper. Every available sheet has been covered in black spider-scratches that bear no visible resemblance to the Latin alphabet. Sebastian, after a quick survey, can’t find a safe path through it to Jim. He sits down cross-legged with his back to the door.

Jim pulls a pile of papers towards him, making small changes in that same jagged script, not looking at Sebastian. “Why are you here?”

“I…worried.”

Jim doesn’t look like he understands. He blinks, then frowns, and doesn’t say anything. The only noise in the room is the rapid scrawl of his pencil over the paper. Sebastian isn’t sure how long they sit there. At intermediate intervals and showing no pattern that Sebastian can see, Jim puts one piece of paper down and grabs the next. Sebastian watches him. The movements of his hands. The tension in his shoulders. Sebastian wants to touch with a hunger like an ache in his stomach.

When the sunlight coming through the window has shifted a full ten degrees on the floor, Sebastian sits up, hugging his knees to his chest. Jim jumps. The movement is jarring after the completely motionless way Sebastian’s been sitting. He looks around. Sebastian is watching him calmly. “I'm sorry I disobeyed you,” he mumbles finally. Jim doesn’t respond, so he continues, “I've had a lot of time to think today.”

“I'm sure you have,” Jim tells him dismissively. He shifts as if to turn back to his writing, but catches the involuntary flinch his words cause in Sebastian and sighs. “Oh, Sebby. I’ll only make you weak you in the end. _Please_ try not to get _sentimental_.”

“There isn't anyone else for me to be attached to,” Sebastian says dully, looking down. “I'll deal with it. It won't be a problem again.”

“See that it isn't.”

Sebastian’s arms hug a little tighter around himself. It’s not very comforting. He nods, just once, quick and sharp, to show that he’s understood. The room is dead quiet without the scratch of Jim’s pencil on paper. Sebastian doesn’t look up.

_I know you want me. I know –_

_I don’t know anything. I’ll never figure you out, will I?_

Jim takes pity on him, finally. “Come here, Seb. I'll teach you how to read these.” Sebastian looks up, startled, and blinks at Jim. Jim hasn’t looked away. Those dark eyes are fixed on Sebastian, just as intense as ever, but tempered by unexpected sweetness. He’s being kind. Sebastian unfolds himself from the door, and picks his way through the mess. Jim shoves a few papers to the side, and clears a spot next to him on the mattress.

Sebastian sits down carefully like it’s a bed of nails.

“Now see this,” Jim starts, pointing out one of the scratches, practically indecipherable from the rest, “Is the key to the whole thing…”

Sebastian picks the code up quickly. It’s a tricky bit of letter substitution based around the pattern of a spider’s web, the letters all swapped and jumbled together and replaced by symbols in a way that seems random but isn’t. His lips move as he repeats things to himself silently. Jim doesn’t have to explain anything twice.

The small patch of sunlight in the room creeps away from them, then disappears entirely. They’re both still in the center of the room, shifting position only minutely – Sebastian’s foot falls asleep, and he shifts to allow blood flow to it. Jim straightens to keep his back from going sore. It’s silent again, apart from the sounds of Jim writing. Once Sebastian can understand what Jim’s doing, the room goes from messy to meticulously organized – piles of accounts, numbers, addresses, things as simple as garbage dumps, “call for _rapid_ cleaning,” and then, occasionally, what must be records of arms deals and drug shipments and smuggling…

Despite the fact that neither of them has moved, they’ve ended up closer together, the line of Sebastian’s thigh pressed tight along Jim’s.

\----------

“You really want to join the military,” Jim says, apropos nothing, when the light starts to fade from the room. His voice is rough. Sebastian wonders how long it’s been since either of them has spoken. It hasn’t seemed necessary.

Somehow he’s braced himself slightly behind Jim so Jim’s back is pressed to his chest. Easier to read over his shoulder, this way, but when Jim twists to look at him Sebastian realizes how close they are.

“I won't survive in captivity,” he answers, after a moment of thought. “The life my parents want for me - Eton. Law. A practice. A carefully selected wife. The pub on Sundays. Drinking myself mad and sloppy until I snap and kill someone for no reason except I can and I _was_ the best, before life made me old and soft and slow. No. _No._ Better a bloody death then that.” He thinks Jim will understand.

“But, oh, the places you could go,” Jim looks away, back to the papers, fingers hovering over them as he looks for something specific. “The people who would hire…”

“Don't,” Sebastian says firmly, feeling like his heart has gone deep-sea diving. Jim, thinking he can fix everything. Assuming he can control the world. Find Sebastian a job with a gun, keep him out of the war. _If it’s not him, I don’t want it. I don’t want anyone else to use me._ “It's not worth it.”

“Don't what?”

“Whatever you're doing. I’m for the military. And we'll both hope I take a bullet there.”

“ _Fine,_ ” Jim says, and drops the paper he’s plucked out back on the pile. It’s not until the word leaves his mouth that Sebastian realizes he’d been hoping Jim would deny it, been holding his breath for Jim to say, ‘But I want you to live.’

_Selfish. Unrealistic. Of course he wouldn’t hold on when it’s easier to let go._

Sebastian stands. Jim looks startled. “Where are you going?”

“Home,” Sebastian tells him, and heads for the door on unsteady legs. He’s been sitting too long. “I shouldn't have come.” There’s silence behind him, but he still stops with his hand on the doorknob. Hesitating. There’s longing and hurt like a swelling ache in his chest, and he wonders if he’ll ever be able to speak to Jim without pissing them both off.  _I want to stay,_ he thinks, _but I want to stay forever so it’s better to leave quick like ripping a Band-Aid off…_

There’s a loud bang behind him as a drawer slams shut.

Sebastian turns back, startled. Jim has a duffle bag in one hand and is shoving clothes inside it haphazardly. As Sebastian watches, he grabs the pile of papers with _Important!!_ scratched across the top, and shoves that in as well. “What are you doing?” Sebastian asks, somewhat redundantly.

“ _Really_ , Sebby,” Jim drawls, packing like a whirling dervish, blowing around the room as the duffle bag swells to bursting, “Would _you_ want to live here?

“If you don't have somewhere else,” Sebastian manages, smiling slowly, “You know I do have spare rooms –“

On their way down the stairs they pass Jim’s mother on the couch. She hasn’t moved. Sebastian still can’t tell if she’s living or dead.

\------------------

The cab ride is silent and tense. In the end they make it a total of three steps inside the door of Sebastian’s house before Jim drops his bag and fixes Sebastian with a dissection-stare. “So, w _hy_.”

“Sorry?”

“Why are you doing all this?”

Sebastian places his bag on the couch, steeling himself. “Shut the door.” Jim kicks it closed behind himself, crosses his arms, and stares at Sebastian with an obvious challenge on his face. Sebastian takes a moment just to look at him – drink him in – then slowly starts to piece the words together. “I am alone,” he starts, finally. “Utterly alone. There isn't a person who knows who I am. I _killed_ someone and no one even noticed a change.” Jim isn’t helping, isn’t saying anything, isn’t even twisting his face in interesting ways to distract Sebastian from how naked and bare the words feel. “And then there was you. _You._ You the _only_ \- you are unique in this world. I owe you. I need you. I had nothing to look ahead to except a senseless death, but _you_ –“

“Adorable as that is, darling, you _must_ have realized by now that I'm a complete psychopath. I don't _do_ emotion.”

_You’re not, you’re not._

_You’re brutal and fierce and implacable but underneath you care, so much, you are sweet and unsure and I_ know _–_

_No._

_I don’t know anything._

“Fine,” Sebastian growls, not sure if he’s frustrated with himself or with Jim, “I don't _care._ Make me what you need me to be to keep me around. Your pet. Whatever. Weren't you boasting that you could break me down and rebuild me how you like? Then _do it._ ”

Jim scoffs, eyes rolling. “I have enough _toys_ , Sebastian, I really don’t need another one making my toy-box all _messy_.”

A brief flash of frustration flares behind Sebastian’s eyelids and his tongue moves faster than his brain. “Shame. Other way around then? I'd love to have you on a _leash._ ”

The world seems to pause so Sebastian has time to look aghast at the words that have come out of his mouth.

Jim starts laughing, hysterically, doubled over and clutching his stomach. He has to wipe tears from his eyes before he can speak. “Oh, _Kitten!_ ” Then, sudden shock of change, and his voice is a biting snarl. “As if you _could_.”

“You see yourself topping? I don't think so.”

“You don't have to _top_ to be in control.”

 _Jim riding Sebastian, hips rocking them together hard, a sheen of sweat on his skin and a snarl in his throat as he sinks his teeth in Sebastian’s shoulder, a brilliant hot flare of pain as his hips slam down again and Sebastian is helpless –_ “Let’s not talk about this.”

“Why, _kitten_ , does it make you _nervous_? Knowing that even with your dick in my ass, you'd still be the BITCH?”

“ _Stop it_.”

Jim leaves the door and grabs a fistful of Sebastian’s hair, yanking him down so they’re eye to eye. “Stop _what,_ kitten? Stop telling the _truth_?” Sebastian struggles, but it’s not enough to stop Jim. He doesn’t know if he wants it to be. His lips feel dry, and he licks them, but it doesn’t help.

“S-Stop trying to frustrate me.”

“Why, is it _working_?”

“No!”

The fist in Sebastian’s hair tightens, pulls him the rest of the way to the ground. Sebastian hits his knees and sways, unsteady. His eyes on Jim are so blown they look black. “ _Liar,_ _liar._ I don't have boundaries and I DON'T FEEL. _Look_ at you, Sebby, are you SURE you even want to _try_ and survive me?!”

“Yes. _Boss_.” Sebastian is, embarrassingly, breathless. Jim spits on him, a spatter across his face.

“You are the most _single-mindedly_ STUPID person I have _ever_ met.” When he turns his back to stalk away, hand disentangling from Sebastian’s hair, Sebastian wipes Jim’s spit from his face with the back of his hand. He’s on his feet in an instant, lunging forward, the momentum carrying him into Jim and slamming them both hard against the wall by the door. Jim’s crushed into the wall with a grunt. He struggles, but Sebastian is stronger, and once he grabs Jim’s arms there’s no escape for either of them. “ _Let me go!_ ” Jim shrieks, angry, writhing against the wall. Sebastian twists him around, pinning him again with barely an inch of separation between their faces. Their bodies are pressed tight, chests, hips, one of Sebastian’s thighs between Jim’s. Ragged breath puffs against Sebastian’s face, Jim’s lips just slightly parted, and Sebastian sees him tilt on the edge of something much deeper than anger.

“No.”

Jim screams in frustration. “ _I’ll kill you – !_ ” Sebastian cuts him off with a hard press of his lips into Jim’s. They are soft, and slightly chapped. His face is roughly shaven, and Sebastian can feel the scratch of facial hair against his chin. He tastes sweetly of mint, his breath hot and startled, his lips parted with surprise when Sebastian pulls back.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Jim’s eyes are round and open, and all the anger is gone. His voice sounds soft and fragile.

“What you should have done while I was on my knees. Then you'd have had control of it.” Sebastian smiles at him sweetly. Jim goes slack in his grip, sulking.

“I told you not to touch me until I started it.”

“You did start it. Talking about me being your bitch with my cock in your ass. Forcing me to my knees.” Unable to help himself, Sebastian shifts closer. His mouth ghosts against Jim’s ear. “I'd've sucked your cock if you'd given me the chance. Still would.” He can feel the tremor that Jim struggles to supress. Trapped between them, the small shudder runs down the length of Sebastian’s body and, god, he _wants._

“Don't touch me,” Jim says, all in one breath, nervous, “I don't like people touching me _I don't like getting dirty_ -” He’s starting to panic, heartbeat high, and Sebastian wonders if Jim can even tell the difference between fear and arousal. The line seems very thin. He rakes his teeth over Jim’s earlobe, and Jim moans, “No – “ but it doesn’t sound like a protest. Sebastian bites him again, lower, over the jumping pulse in his throat, traces a spiral of wet with his tongue upwards.

“You could have had me on the floor,” he murmurs against Jim’s neck, feeling his lips move on the skin. Jim sucks in a breath, sharp and hissing. “I don't have any practice but you could have fucked my mouth if you wanted.” Jim tries to shove him away, but he refuses to move, sucks a mark beneath Jim’s ear. “If wanted me to stop you'd have gone for the pistol by now. You can get out of a hold like this.”

Jim _growls,_ low and wild, and slips Sebastian’s grip.

_I misjudged._

_He’ll kill me._

_If he really didn’t want –_

And that’s as far as Sebastian gets before Jim’s hand wraps in his hair, yanks his head back. Suddenly, explosively, Jim’s mouth is on his. His brain goes offline. Jim’s mouth is hot, devouring, and he kisses Sebastian frantic and violent. There’s a bloom of pain when Jim sinks his teeth in Sebastian’s lip and the quick, clever movements of Jim’s tongue against his own are just this side of manic, just this side of too much.

Sebastian thinks he whimpers, but it’s hard to tell.

Sebastian crushes them both against the wall, and his fingers bury in the fabric of Jim’s pants, yanking his hips forward. The friction makes him curse, that one he hears, but Jim’s mouth swallows the sound and out of nowhere, Sebastian thinks clearly, _fuck,_ _I don’t know if I can survive this._

He pulls back, gasping. “I need –“

“Shut the _fuck up_ ,” Jim cuts him off, and that fucking hand in Sebastian’s hair is wrenching his head backwards at an angle that’s painful and perfect. “I don't care what you need.” Where Sebastian’s skin is stretched taut, over his bared throat, Jim buries his teeth.

“Oh christ – oh _fuck_ – _Jim_ – “  There’s another yank on his hair and Jim is leaving a connect-the-dot puzzle of bruises over his neck. Sebastian grinds his hips forward against Jim, fucking them together, and there is too much fabric and it’s too hot and Sebastian’s mind is in sobbing pieces on the floor. “Please!”

He doesn’t know how Jim gets the right leverage to shove him back, but suddenly Sebastian is stumbling away from him, looking at a dishevelled, panting madman with blown eyes and bruised lips. Jim’s shirt is hopelessly wrinkled and the way his trousers are strained and tight, outline of his cock nearly visible, he’s just as affected as Sebastian.

“Couch or bed,” Jim snaps, “Because I am NOT getting fucked against a bloody _wall_.”

 


	5. Chapter 5

They barely make it up the stairs.

At the landing Sebastian catches up with Jim and pushes him off balance against the wall, pinning him there for a frantic kiss. He rips Jim’s shirt up and at the touch of his hands on Jim’s bare stomach Jim makes a helpless noise – almost a whimper. It goes straight to Sebastian’s cock. He bites Jim’s lip and pulls him back off the wall, gives him a hard shove towards the rest of the stairs. Jim scrambles up them, Sebastian on his heels, gripping the railing to haul himself upwards faster.

At the top of the stairs Jim turns and his hair is a dark halo around him. He says, “ _Now,_ Seb,” and holds out his arms. Sebastian is in them in a second, kissing him fiercely, grabbing at him – hips, ass, ribs, _God, my hands on Jim, fuck,_ fuck– then Sebastian isn’t thinking at all anymore. They lose the kiss when Jim’s shirt is tugged over his head, almost catch it, lose it again. It’s an open-mouth slide that they can’t quite get to fit in the desperation and rush.

They do make it to shirtless, somehow. Then they’re in the bedroom, and Sebastian kicks the door shut behind them. The noise echoes through the house. Jim is greedy, running his hands over Sebastian’s sides and shoulder blades, digging his nails in on the way down like he can’t get a deep enough contact. Sebastian is panting, open mouthed.

Jim bends his head. His teeth scrape over Sebastian’s chest.

_Oh fuck._

_Didn’t know I could make that sound._

Sebastian grabs a fistful of hair and yanks him back up, seals their mouths together again. He chases Jim’s tongue with his own, but Jim is licking possession of him in little teasing flicks and he can’t seem to get enough. He gives up on winning that, settles for the button of Jim’s trousers, the zip. His fingers brush the rigid heat underneath the fabric and Jim gasps, mouth open and round in a perfect _O._

Then the button comes, and Jim’s trousers pool to the floor. He nearly trips stepping out of them. Sebastian laughs. His get tossed casually aside, knocking the shade off the lamp on the dresser.

Just pants separating them now, two thin layers of cotton, and Jim is back in his arms like a living flame, writhing and clutching and grinding his cock against Sebastian’s thigh.

It’s heaven. It’s hell. Sebastian is going mad with it. He grabs Jim’s hips, jerks them an inch to the left, and then with almost no barrier they’re pressed hard against each other. There isn’t enough breath between their mouths. Jim hisses, and his fingernails draw blood, and Sebastian ruts against him again with a groan that’s equal parts relief and frustration.

Jim pushes and drags Sebastian to the bed, and somehow – Sebastian’s a bit fuzzy on the details – he ends up sitting on the edge with Jim straddling him. There’s a moment of breathless peace like the eye of the storm, and then Sebastian grabs underneath Jim’s thighs and pulls him closer, his cock pressing hard against Jim’s ass. He leaves a trail of flushed skin down to Jim’s shoulder, and Jim is panting, head lolling back, fingers scrabbling over Sebastian for purchase. Sebastian rocks his hips upwards. He can feel a frantic heartbeat and he’s not sure if it’s his or Jim’s. Over Jim’s collarbone, his teeth sink in.

“Sebastian!” Jim gasps, sounding shocked, sounding _wrecked._

Sebastian pulls back as he strips Jim the rest of the way, looking up at him like watching Jim’s swollen parted lips will keep him sane. It’s hard to think straight while he peels the thin cotton pants off Jim, hard to breathe right. Jim helps by wiggling his hips in a way that’s more distracting than actually helpful, but between the two of them they manage to get him naked. Then Sebastian is lost again because there’s a drop of pre-cum beading at the top of Jim’s cock and when he takes it in his fist Jim makes a sound like he’s crying, a sob or a moan or a plea for help –

“I want you to ride me,” Sebastian tells him, with a sharp grind of his hips upwards to punctuate the sentence. It drives Jim higher into Sebastian’s hand, a tight ring around his cock, half-slick with pre-cum.  Only one layer of cotton between them, now, and Jim is moaning like he’s already fucked.

“ _Oh_ – yes – _lube_ – “Jim’s eyes are screwed shut and he’s rocking them together in tiny stilted jerks, up into Sebastian’s hand and down onto his erection. More like twitches, really. Sebastian wonders if Jim could stop if he tried.

“Top drawer.”

Jim whines a little in protest, but he reaches for it anyways –fingers fumbling at the drawer of the bedside table and he nearly falls when Sebastian’s hand moves down his shaft again. He gets the bottle of lube despite a series of deep growling groans that Sebastian considers arousing enough to be illegal. Sebastian takes the opportunity to get naked underneath him, kicking his pants onto the floor, and then there is nothing, _nothing,_ separating them.

The slide of skin on skin whites out Sebastian’s brain. He uncaps the lube and squirts it on his hand, too much of it, thick colourless globs that slick his fingers and half his hand and drips onto the bed where they will stain the sheets. It doesn’t seem to matter, not when Jim’s pressing back against the pad of Sebastian’s index finger like he’s incapable of self-control. The first finger slides in to the knuckle almost without resistance, and Jim ruts back onto it greedily.

_Fucking himself on my fingers._

_Jesus._

He slides it out just a little, pushes back in, makes Jim curse in a long gravelly stream of truly creative profanity. The clench of muscle around his finger is hot and unbelievably tight, so tight Sebastian thinks he’ll never manage to fit. Jim is already impatient between moans, growling, “Hurry _up,_ ” and scowling when his face isn’t slack in pleasure.

The second finger is a harder fit. When the two slide in together there’s this slick sound of lube and flesh that makes Sebastian’s hips buck upwards, sliding his cock along Jim’s with just their pre-cum to ease the friction. Jim is past swearing, now, moans hitching in the back of his throat and coming out strangled.

There’s a terrifying moment where Sebastian thinks he might come – just from this, just from the way Jim grabs at his shoulder and writhes and makes those helpless, wanting noises. He swallows the impulse, thrusts his fingers in again, spreads Jim open. Jim’s head falls back, baring his throat, and Sebastian can’t resist; he’s surging upwards, hips and fingers and teeth, and Jim is a line of needy tension above him, unsure whether to grind down onto Sebastian’s fingers or press upwards into the pain of the bruise Sebastian is grinding over his trachea.

A third finger in, now. Jim’s breathing is so loud it drowns out everything else, hitching at the bottom of each snatched lungful and devolving into little pitiful moans like he wants something, badly, that he can’t reach. Like it’s killing him not to have more.

_I can fix that._

Sebastian pulls his fingers away and Jim cries out in protest, sounding betrayed. Sebastian bites him again to soothe it, leaving a deep purple mark that will sit just under the collar of Jim’s shirt when they’re dressed. When he pulls back Jim’s eyes are open again, just barely, the thick fringe of lashes like a smudge of coal.

“ _Seb,_ ” he whispers, and can’t manage any more. Sebastian reaches down between them, lets the lube from his fingers smear over his cock, still hot from Jim’s body.

_Fuck, oh fuck, oh Jesus fucking Christ –_

His eyes have shut, he realizes, hand falling away from his cock because the only other option is to keep touching and then he’ll never be able to stop. Jim is pushing him backwards on the bed, unexpectedly strong. His shoulders hit hard, and when he tries to get up there’s a flat palm on his chest holding him down. He opens his eyes. Jim is grinning, reaching behind himself, taking Sebastian’s cock in too-cold hand, positioning himself –

_Oh._

“Jim – “

And then Jim pushes himself backwards and down, impaling himself inch-by-inch on Sebastian, and everything is blank. There’s a gold sort of glow from Sebastian’s toes to his hips and _fuck_ , Jim is slick and tight around him, all surrender except for the way he’s panting past a wicked grin as he watches Sebastian coming undone.

Jim is impatient. He takes Sebastian in with no sense of restraint, not stopping until his ass is flat against Seb’s thighs and then there’s no pause, _nothing_ , no chance to adjust before he starts back up with those awkward stilted twitches of his hips. Jim shuts his eyes and bites his lip, causing a dent in the skin that Sebastian can’t look away from. Somehow, he’s still grinning. Bruised and debauched and moaning as he fucks himself on Sebastian, Jim is smiling a triumphant mocking smile that makes it hard for Sebastian to focus on anything, _anything,_ anything but him. Sebastian grabs at him again, fingers spasming on Jim’s thigh, leaving long scratches that do nothing at all to direct Jim’s movements because Sebastian was _mad_ if he thought he was controlling this.

Jim’s jerking thrusts have gotten longer and smoother and he’s riding Sebastian like he _means_ it, panting and growling and driving them both relentlessly to climax. Sebastian is _obliterated_ , eyes screwed shut, lungs heaving as he tries to get enough air to stay sane and he feels rather than sees Jim go rigid over him, the tenseness and tremor that runs over Jim’s body like water.

“Sebastian,” Jim says, not a scream, a toneless gasp of disbelief that’s so quiet Sebastian nearly misses it. Then he’s writhing, muscles clenching, jamming himself down as far as he can on Sebastian as his body jerks and he loses himself.

It’s too much.

Sebastian teeters on the last vestiges of self-control for a heart stopping second, then, all at once like a car crash or the spark of a gun, he feels himself fall over the edge of release.

And he’s gone.

 


	6. Five Minutes to Midnight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian has a birthday surprise. Jim does not like the surprise.

It’s good, while it lasts.

They have a year, and it’s a good year. They make a defiant stand at school and dare anyone, _anyone_ , to beat them. No one can. Sebastian fights almost every day, in and out of the principal’s office with bruises and cuts on his face. Jim cleans them in the bathroom afterwards with rough hands and disinfectant that he knows will sting, laughing delightedly when Sebastian curses. Two boys land in the hospital, Brian and the lackey he used on Jim. Brian’s football career is officially over; although there’s a good chance when he gets out of recovery he’ll regain most of the use of his legs. No one can prove Sebastian did it. Expulsion is discussed. His parents Skype his teacher from a business trip to London, and no, regrettably, they won’t be able to come home until the summer –

Jim spends a sleepless night on his laptop and suddenly there’s no record of Sebastian fighting in the school computers. Without the record, an expulsion could lead to a lawsuit from Sebastian’s threateningly wealthy parents. The school backs down.

Nights they spend together. The house seems less cavernous with the two of them in it, the noise of them shouting and laughing and fucking filling the empty space. Jim’s papers spread over the floor and the neat little table that displays Sebastian’s weapons quickly becomes the only clean place in the house. Whenever they can, they end up in bed.

Sebastian is always frantic after a fight, tearing Jim’s clothing, marking his skin, consumed by a destructive energy that Jim laps up until they’re past the point where a punch is something thrown in anger. When Sebastian backhands Jim now there’s a breathless tension and they both understand it’s going to end with Jim telling him, “Just _fuck_ me already!” imperious and frustrated. Jim likes that, the way Sebastian gets rough and thoughtless, likes how he gets off on the violence of it.

In the mornings, though, half-asleep, Sebastian can be sweet and lazy like molasses. He comes awake gradually, stretching and yawning, curling Jim into him. Half the time when Jim wakes up first he stays where he is, waits for Sebastian’s soft sleepy kisses against the bruises on his neck. Those are the days where they go slow, drawing frustration to the point of tears and past again, just because they have all day to see who gives way first.

Jim always wins, and he likes that too.

It seems to pass like a dream, the last year of high school, and Jim half-thinks he’s never going to wake up.

\----------------

One morning, swimming out of the edge of sleep, Jim rolls over and realizes Sebastian is gone.

It’s been altogether too fast that he’s gotten used to the warm heavy weight of Sebastian beside him at night, the comfortable familiarity of Sebastian’s indent in the mattress. Waking up without him is jarringly new, and Jim is fully conscious in a heartbeat.

The bed is cool where Sebastian should be sleeping, sun through the window lighting the neat turn of the sheets. Sebastian had gotten out slow, careful not to wake him. Jim hisses through his teeth.

_Stupid, Kitten, very stupid. Do you think you can hide things from me? Oh, you’re in for it now._

He swings himself out of bed and drops barefoot to the floor. It’s already getting hot outside, despite the early hour, and the sky is a pure flawless blue through the windows. The house is quiet, almost silent, and Jim pads through it without disturbing anything but the dust motes in the air.

Sebastian is nowhere to be found, although his weapons haven’t been touched and he rarely leaves the house unarmed. Jim trails his fingers over the sharp edge of an illegal butterfly knife. _Hide-and-go-seek,_ he thinks, and grins, the anger gone before he can hold on to it and replaced by fond anticipation of punishing Sebastian for whatever he’s hiding. Plans spiral through Jim’s mind and his finger over the blade presses idly down, a prick of pain to suit his thoughts.

 _Poor thing really does like it too much when I’m angry. Oh, Tiger, I’m going to_ hurt _you tonight._

Jim cards his fingers through his hair, tugs it, scrubs his hands over his face. He’s already in a better mood, bright and bubbly. When Sebastian gets back he’ll be all sullen and contrite, all hair-in-his-eyes and scowls, and Jim is looking forward to making him beg for forgiveness.

He skips upstairs to get dressed, completely unconcerned that the grin on his face feels too wide to be pleasant, even to him.

\---------------

Sebastian isn’t back until almost half noon.

Jim ends up waiting for him on the back lawn, sprawled out in the grass. He braids flower-stems while he waits and keeps his phone tucked in a pocket because you never know when work might call. _Especially_ when you’ve got a drug ring getting started in London.

Sebastian’s shadow gives him away before the sound of his quiet footsteps are audible over the grass. Jim can appreciate a man who knows how to be quiet.

Come to think of it, he can appreciate a lot about Sebastian.

“I’ve turned eighteen,” Sebastian says without preamble, flopping to the ground beside Jim. Jim twists to look at him. In the sun Sebastian is golden hair and tanned skin, graceful and lazy like a great sleepy cat.

“Happy birthday,” he drawls, and expects that to be the end of it. But Sebastian doesn’t let it go. He stares out over the lawn with that shuttered-off expression that Jim’s starting to hate, avoiding eye contact. Jim frowns.

“Which means I’m eligible to enlist.”

The frown turns into a glare. “I told you you’re not to.” In the core of Jim there’s a bright spark of fear against the darkness of anger. _Disobedient, stupid, ordinary, you idiot, you’ll die._ He expects Sebastian to shrug and move on, start a new conversation. Posture a bit and then give in, like Sebastian always does, but Sebastian gives him nothing but resolute silence. That’s worrying. “I _told_ you not to!” Jim repeats, a bit louder to drown out the quiet, the pitch of his voice jumping nervously high.

“And I told you it was the only reasonable option.”

This is a fight they’ve had before and they’ll have again, because that _idiot_ can’t see Jim has jobs lined up for both of them. If he wants to shoot people Jim is more than ready to accommodate. Jim can do that. He’s clever enough to do _anything_ , but it all goes to shit if Sebastian is really dense enough to _join the military._ Jim doesn’t even bother to struggle with his rising frustration. His face twists in a deeper scowl and if Sebastian is going to be difficult today Jim is going to remind him just who’s in charge here.

“I _forbid_ you, do you hear me?”

“You can’t forbid me from doing something I’ve already done.”

Jim’s body goes still as his mind kicks into overdrive. _Sneaking out of the house on his eighteenth birthday, that little fuck, he can’t have._ But Sebastian isn’t looking at him and Jim can read in his posture, in his stiff shoulders and rigid back, that Sebastian is scared and determined. _How he looks when he’s defying me._ Sebastian’s mouth, familiar bloody and soft, cursing and pleading, is set in a thin stubborn line. _No. No no no no no no no, NO._

“You _what._ ”

“I enlisted.”

“ _You didn’t._ ”

“I did.”

Sebastian’s voice is calm and Jim’s mind goes utterly black in anger. Before Jim knows it he’s scrambled to his feet and is staring down at Sebastian, hands balled into furious fists. Sebastian looks up, his eyes intent on Jim’s face, and Jim wonders what he’s searching for.

_Did you want to piss me off? Did you want to hurt me? I’ll fucking kill you for this, Seb, I swear this time I’m going to skin you alive._

“How _dare_ you! I _told_ you we’ll find _another way_ ,” Jim spits at Sebastian, ignoring the inexplicable hollow ache that’s settled in his stomach. It feels like fear and pain, almost, but Jim won’t let himself think about that now. “ _I told you!”_  

Sebastian just stares up at him and for once that transparent face is totally unreadable. Jim _hates_ him in that bitter instant, hates his stoicism and his stubborn one-track mind.

_You can’t go, you just can’t, dammit Sebastian I fucking told you –_

Before he can betray anything else Jim turns sharply on his heel and stalks away.

“Hey –“ Sebastian’s voice behind him is confused, and Jim can almost picture him blinking like a slaughterhouse cow in surprise, scrambling to his feet. “Where are you going?”

“I’m _leaving,_ ” Jim snarls, not bothering to turn.

“ _What?!”_

 _Don’t act so surprised, kitten, you were leaving me first._ Jim’s heels stomp over the front porch and into the house, not pausing to collect the vital papers that are the only physical manifestation of his growing organization. _Keep them. Keep the whole fucking thing, I can build it again, it’s just me, it’s just me and how clever I am and I should never have depended on_ anyone.

Even the voice in Jim’s mind sounds bitter.

“Jim – Jim – “ Sebastian’s voice behind him is ragged and he must have run from the backyard. Jim supposes he’s moving fast if Sebastian is panting chasing him, but he can’t tell. Everything seems slowed down, like the world is stalling. Sebastian’s hand closing around his arm is an unwanted note of reality. “What the hell does that mean?”

“What does it _sound_ like it means?!” _Isn’t it obvious? I’m going home and you can die in the desert for all I care._ Jim snatches his arm away. He gets a glance at Sebastian’s face from the motion and it stabs through his chest. Sebastian’s eyes are wide and confused, and Jim has never seen anyone so pathetically vulnerable.

“We weren’t – I thought you’d expect this, Jim, I – what else was I supposed to do?”

Jim wants to scream, wants to dig his fingernails in those stupid eyes and gouge them out. He jerks himself away from Sebastian and yells, “DID YOU EVER THINK _I_ MIGHT HAVE-“ only cutting himself off when he realizes that it’s too late now for anything he might have done. Everything he’s built in the past year is being destroyed, and there’s a crushing finality to the emptiness left behind. “No,” he settles on finally, voice low and dangerous. “Fuck this. FUCK _you_ ,” as he gives Sebastian a quick shove backwards. “Get the fuck away from me.”

“You might have _what,_ ” Sebastian snarls back, and there’s a sickening drop in Jim’s stomach when instead of hurt Sebastian is implacably angry. He feels with stunned betrayal Sebastian’s hands on his chest, goes stumbling back into the table when he’s pushed. Sebastian’s hair is out of place and Jim’s mind jumps painfully to his thoughts this morning, how he wanted to hurt Seb then just to make it all go away. _We were always supposed to hurt each other, Tiger, but not like this._ “You're a psychopath,” Sebastian continues, voice hard and cruel, and Jim’s never dealt with pain like this before. “You don't feel anything about this. You're just angry I've spoilt your plans.” The words are a punch to the gut and Jim’s thoughts swirl in dizzying anger and pain. He hears it repeat in his mind, _not like this._

Somehow he drags himself off the table and makes it to the door, dimly recognizing that Sebastian is close on his heels. When he’s standing in the doorway he turns, giving them one last chance. “I don’t _ever_ want to see you again,” he hisses at Sebastian, but what he means is, _convince me to forgive you and we’ll have it the way it was, Kitten, just be_ sorry _and I’ll make it okay._

Sebastian spits at his feet. “ _Good._ In case you forgot, _I won’t be on this continent very long._ ”

And that’s it, then. No more chances. No more hazy mornings and violent nights, no more games of power and control, no more loving bruises or sweet cruelties or stupid faces that make Sebastian laugh.

Jim slams the door viciously hard behind him, and, ignoring the sting in his eyes and the tears he knows are coming, walks calmly away.

\-----------------

Jim is alone in a hazy city, blurred edges and surreal angles that don’t quite comfortably fit in the human mind. It’s the setting his dreams usually take. The city spreads and twists and dizzyingly moves around him, but he hangs still in the center and watches it like he always does, like a fly on the wall or a bug in a web.

It’s half lucid, Jim’s mind drifting lazily through various plans and schedules that will come to fruition soon, daily errands and chores he’ll need to keep his business running smoothly. He can feel consciousness niggling at one corner of his mind, but he’s beating it down because he knows he’ll be waking up alone in his mother’s house and he’d like to stay sleeping. There’re splashes of colour like strokes of a brush through the city, and fragments of his code, and sharp bright details that hurt Jim’s brain when he looks at them too closely. The city in Jim’s head is a troubling place, but it’s calmingly familiar now.

 _Sloppy,_ someone says behind him, and that _is_ new. Anything new in the city is dangerous. New means his emotions have seeped through the cracks again, some deadly urge or hunger from his back-brain surfacing into consciousness. He shouldn’t be curious, but Jim turns, achingly slow, a sort of shapeless fear making his heart race faster. _Couldn’t take the time to imagine a better fucking town?_

 _Sebastian? You’re old._ Even as he speaks, he wants to take it back. No, whoever this is, it’s not his Sebastian. Close, though. The man in front of him is tall and blond and tanned, his bare forearms crossed with scars. There’s a rifle case by his foot and a home-rolled cigarette in his mouth. He’s picked out in perfect detail against the shapeless city behind him, from his combat boots to the blood under his fingernails. Maybe in ten years Sebastian will look like this, but he’d never have those cold gauging eyes that are watching Jim without an inch of pity or humanity.

Not Sebastian, Jim thinks, but the man’s eyes narrow in dangerous judgement as he takes a drag on his cigarette and he replies calmly – _It’s_ Moran. _You are?_

 _Jim,_ Moriarty tells him, and expects him to understand. After all, it’s Jim’s dream. But there’s no flash of recognition in this Moran’s eyes, and that makes this dream officially a nightmare. He doesn’t know Jim. The dream tilts hard on its axis, throwing the city off balance.

 _If you’re here to hire me go home._ _Try to follow me to my flat and I'll kill you. I'm creative. And patient. There's no one else there. You could stay alive for days._

 _There's... you're alone?_ Jim feels a cold pang of sorrow despite his uneasy fear, despite the way Moran is still looking at him like he’s sizing Jim for a coffin. In Jim’s head the record of Sebastian’s desperation plays, a stream of memories of Seb begging for the approval of the only person who could see him. Begging for Jim not to let him be alone anymore.

The Moran in front of him blinks in surprise. The expression is Sebastian’s, and Jim’s heart wrenches again. Around them, the city is moving faster, getting darker like a storm is blowing in. The bright flashes of colour aren’t so bright any more. _Is that a come on?_ Moran asks.

Unable to help his curiosity, Jim counters, _What if it was?_

A truly unpleasant smile breaks across Moran’s face, getting wider, and there is nothing jovial about it. _If I wanted to take you home, I'd fuck you until you couldn't see straight, let alone walk. And then I'd start hurting you._ He takes a step closer. Jim is unable to move away. His heart is going uncomfortably fast, now, the kind of fear only achievable in dreams that drags you awake screaming. _Eventually you'd beg me to stop. I'd break something important. Leave you for dead or for intensive care. Never hear about you again. Do you want to reconsider asking?_ The city goes black and Jim’s breath catches, and he wonders if you can suffocate from fear in a dream. _Are you scared?_ Moran asks him, voice low and pleased. His expression is cunning and amused, and Jim feels the _wrongness_ of it like a slap.

 _This is all my fault,_ Jim thinks, or says, the line between the two ill-defined and getting worse. _I let you go..._

 _Yes._ Moran's face twists and stretches like rubber, changing. Then, all at once, he snaps back into focus and he’s Sebastian, Sebastian as he looked this morning, scared and angry in equal parts. _I deserved better than this._

_But you're leaving me._

_No -_ Sebastian reaches out, and with a voice choked with panic and desperation and fear, cries, _Jim!_ his eyes wide and terrified.

Jim hangs immobile, caught in his web, as gravity lurches painfully steep and Sebastian falls away into the darkness.

\----------------

He comes awake in a tangle of clammy sheets and sweat-stained pillows, breathing hard. Without thinking, Jim scrambles out of bed and shoves his feet in the first pair of shoes to hand – gym trainers – not bothering with socks. The t-shirt he pulls on next sticks to the sweat on his spine but that doesn’t matter, not now. He’s out the door in seconds, still in his boxers.

It feels like another nightmare, stumbling through the dark towards Sebastian’s house, running when he can and slowing to a shuddering walk when he can’t push his body any further. Jim’s lungs burn and his legs ache; mosquitos flock to the sweat on his bare shins. He’s sore, so exhausted he can’t think, and there’s a blister on his foot that will probably drive him mad for the next week. But he makes it to Sebastian’s house in under thirty-five minutes. It’s a new record.

He doesn’t bother knocking.

Sebastian is sitting at the kitchen table, hands stilled on a partially disassembled Glock 17. Sebastian always cleans when he’s restless. Usually Jim finds this endearingly compulsive, but right now, he can’t call up the energy to be mocking and light-hearted about it.

“Yes?” Sebastian’s voice is cool and Jim can tell from the way his fingers tense that the effort to stay calm costs him.

Jim eliminates the distance between them with quick steps and he sees Sebastian’s eyes widen as they take in Jim’s unkempt, half-dressed appearance.

_Never show weakness, huh? Well I’m weak all over now, Kitten, how does it suit me?_

Jim drops to his knees. Sebastian takes a deep breath, and Jim can see the shock and disbelief on his face.

“Don’t go,” Jim whispers, hating himself for how needy it is, but there’s no _time_ anymore to be stubborn. “Please.” Then words fail him and he takes a breath in that is _really_ threatening to become a sob.

Pieces of Glock scatter across the table and Sebastian’s voice catches on Jim’s name. He’s reaching for Jim, looking worried now, shoving his chair back so he can pull Jim to him in a protective embrace. Despite himself Jim feels a little spike of amusement at how fast Sebastian leaps to defend him. Then a sliver of light reflects off the gun barrel on the table and Jim remembers why he needs protecting. The brief amusement is gone. He clutches at Sebastian’s shirt and Sebastian, mercifully, hugs him tighter.

Jim doesn’t realize that there’s a silence until Sebastian has been holding him for several dragging minutes, rocking him gently back and forth like a sobbing child. The terror of the nightmare is fading slowly and Jim’s sweat still hasn’t dried, but his breathing gets a little closer to normal. When he trusts himself to speak, Jim insists to Sebastian, “You _can’t_.”

Sebastian is infuriatingly calm. “You’ll need someone experienced,” he murmurs against Jim’s hair, quiet and resigned.

“You can get that _anywhere_ –“ Sebastian interrupts with a sigh, a long huff through his nose that means he’s going to disagree, and fear lurches through Jim’s chest again. _Sebastian, becoming that soulless creature from the dream, Sebastian at war, Sebastian dead in the desert, no, it can’t, he can’t,_ **I** _can’t._ “Please!”

“That’s twice,” Sebastian says carefully, “That you’ve said please. You never say please. Something’s happened to you.”

“I need you here,” Jim evades, hiding his face in Sebastian’s shoulder. “You can’t go, Kitten, and that’s final. Tell me you won’t, _now_.”

“Tell me why,” Sebastian commands him, and Jim curses whatever God had a sick enough sense of humour to make _Sebastian Moran_ perceptive enough to demand a reason at a time like this.

“You’ll think I’m crazy.”

“I don’t care.”

Jim takes a deep breath and opens his mouth, but all that comes out is a soft terrified sound and it unnerves him even more.

_Oh my. I’m really coming undone. Whoops._

But before he can start to second-guess Sebastian is there, stroking his hair and murmuring steady meaningless things like a farmer to a nervous filly. His quietly reasonable voice leaves no room for panic, and the whole nightmare comes tumbling out of Jim’s mouth in a jumbled up mess that he knows doesn’t make sense at all.

“It wasn't _you_ ,” Jim finishes, finally. “It was you but you were alone and a husk and you were so, so – so _broken_ , Seb you were _soulless,_ I could _see_ it in you.” Sebastian’s fingers card through his hair and just for a _second_ Jim thinks that means Seb’s finally decided to be reasonable.

“I need basic,” Sebastian says finally, and Jim nearly _moans_ at how stupid and frustrating it is to be back to square one _again._ “Let me learn everything I can and then get myself dishonorably discharged, Jim, I'm sure I could do any number of things that’ll send me home in disgrace.”

“Or you could just _not go_ , how does _that_ sound?”

“Who’s going to hire an inexperienced hit man?” Sebastian chuckles and kisses Jim’s forehead. Jim wants to smack him. “Idiot.” His voice is full of affection as his thumb strokes over Jim’s spine reassuringly.

“You go and then you’ll _break_ and I –“ Jim stops himself there, and Sebastian covers it for him.

“I won’t. It’s only three months for basic. They can’t break me in three months.”

“It took _me_ a _week_!”

“You’re different.”

Jim buries his face in Sebastian’s chest and tries to ignore the invisible knife shoved through his chest. Sebastian huffs again, frustrated and tired. Jim wonders why he can’t just _do what Jim wants,_ because at this point, honestly, Seb’s only being stubborn.

_I could fix it all for you, promise, I could._

“Kiss me,” Sebastian says suddenly, gently, his knuckle pushing Jim’s chin upwards.

 _If you can’t fight it, fuck it,_ Jim thinks, _how very typical of_ you.

But Sebastian’s knuckle presses up again and Jim lets his head tilt back. When Sebastian’s lips seal over his Jim bites at him hard as punishment. Sebastian makes a soft, wanting noise, the sound of a dam breaking, then Jim is pouring all his fear and his fury into the kiss, pulling Sebastian closer with insatiable frustration.

Instead of rising to the occasion, escalating things, making this a bloody night and a sore morning, Sebastian just takes it. He lets Jim tongue-fuck his mouth and scratch at his shoulders until Jim wants to scream.

 _Come on!_ Fight me _. I want to be angry at you!_

The next bite at Seb’s lip draws blood, and it’s there in kiss between them – a metallic taste in Jim’s mouth, on the slide of Sebastian’s tongue against his as Sebastian kisses back slow and languid. He’s patient, letting Jim slake his frustrations until Jim sags in his arms. Then he takes control.

He presses soft barely-there kisses on Jim’s lips, on the vulnerable skin just under his jaw, over his jugular. All the places where he’d normally leave a bruise, Sebastian traces with gentle, languid attention. His hands slide over Jim with a slow hard pressure, learning his body by feel.

_The sentimental idiot is worshipping me._

As Jim thinks it Sebastian’s hands are on his hips and he’s being lifted, pulled into Sebastian’s lap. Sebastian tugs Jim’s t-shirt over his head and his mouth trails lower, an unexpected lick of tongue over Jim’s collarbone that feels like lightening. From the new position Jim can grind his hips downwards into Sebastian’s lap and he writhes, trying to force frustration.

Sebastian refuses to be hurried.

When he finally starts to bite, it’s not the familiar animal tear of anger and lust. He nips little claiming marks into Jim’s neck, deliberately indiscreet, just on the edge of pain without falling over. It’s maddening. Jim whines, and presses down again into Sebastian’s increasingly obvious erection. It doesn’t get him anything, not at first. When Seb’s traced his neck in flushed red from collar to jaw he nips at Jim’s ear and goes back down – slick slides of tongue over the bruises, and the movements of Jim’s hips stop being calculated. He thrusts mindlessly against Sebastian, breath soft even though it’s speeding. There’s a sense of fragility to the moment and Jim can’t tell if it’s because it’s so slow or because he knows it’ll be over so soon. He opens his mouth, and he’s not sure what he’s about to say but it’s one of two things and they’re completely opposed.

_Don’t you dare tease me. Hurry up. I need you NOW._

_Tiger, you make this last or I’ll never forgive you._

Doesn’t matter what would have come out of his mouth, because as soon as he opens it Sebastian lifts his head and kisses him again, stalling the words. Not as slow anymore, but not violent, a passionate heat and if kisses could speak this one would say, _I lov –_

Jim cuts that thought off violently just before Sebastian rolls his hips upwards and the press of their bodies together makes Jim moan, mouth dropping open. Sebastian swallows the sound, gives it back with a thrust of tongue into a hungry kiss. Jim is _on board._ Jim wants more of _that_ , more of Sebastian’s hard cock rocking up into his ass. As soon as the first shock of pressure is gone he’s hungry for _harder, faster, more_ – this should be the cue for Sebastian to get _going._ But instead Seb rocks them together at the same measured pace with infuriating restraint, refusing to listen to Jim’s frustrated whimpers.

_I’m going fucking mad._

When he thinks he can’t take it anymore, when he’s on the edge of grabbing what’s left of the Glock and holding it to Sebastian’s head just to get an inch more stimulation, Sebastian grips his hips and lets the kiss go, picking Jim up as he stands.

Jim wraps his legs around Seb’s waist on instinct, and the angle is all _right_ now.

_That’s better. Oh come on – just –_

Altogether too soon Seb sets him down on the table, and Jim is on the edge of screaming frustration again. Then he realizes Sebastian is pushing him backwards, setting his mouth to Jim’s stomach as Jim is pressed flat on the table and pieces of gun go crashing to the floor. He pulls Jim’s boxers off and lets them drop in a crumpled heap, leaves those same little nipping bruises over Jim’s hip bones. It’s going perfectly fine until Sebastian shifts just a little and his mouth is – _oh fuck –_ his mouth is close and his breath is hot against Jim’s erection, and – _oh fuck Tiger – oh please –_

Nope.

Sebastian moves off again.

Jim makes a sound that will humiliate him for _ages_ , he’s sure, something high-pitched and keening, and he tries without much success not to writhe on the table. Mercifully Sebastian is back before the words to demand his return are fully formed, and somehow – Jim doesn’t really care _how_ , at this point – his fingers are slick and sticky with lube.

He pushes in to the first knuckle without warning or hesitation.

Jim feels his spine come off the table in a long arc, only the bones of his shoulders and hips touching the wood. His fingers scramble for contact and his left hand finds Sebastian’s forearm braced on the table. He grips hard for support, and then a second finger is pushing in andJim isn’t even sure if he can _take_ it. There’s a burning ache despite how much he’s bearing down on Seb’s fingers, and he knows Sebastian is stretching him far too quickly.

_I don’t care, I don’t care, I want it._

The burn is giving way quickly to pleasure, and it seems Sebastian was saving all of his impatience for this, the last thing keeping them from being as close as humanly possible. He preps Jim with short quick thrusts of his fingers, no consideration for skill, only brushing Jim’s prostate by happy accident.  Jim squirms.

_A new kind of teasing. Dammit, Seb, just fuck me! I’m never letting you set the pace again._

When Jim is again considering threatening murder just as a way to get laid, Sebastian pulls his fingers out with a slick sound. Jim is left feeling loose and empty, taking deep breaths to calm himself and collect his scattered mind. It doesn’t seem to help. Before he can even squirm to a less exposed position Sebastian’s back over him, pulling him to the edge of the table where their hips can fit together.

Jim’s breath catches.

He pushes up on his elbows as Sebastian leans forward and there – _oh yes, there, hell fucking yes –_ they find the kiss just as Sebastian pushes in.

After the rush of preparation Sebastian is taking his time, and Jim doesn’t mind as much when it’s Sebastian’s cock pressing into Jim inch by measured inch. The leisurely pace of the kiss is doing very little to hide Sebastian’s ragged breathing.

It’s been a long time since either of them have spoken. Both of them have been hushed, almost silent, like there’s someone in the next room they’re trying to hide from.

_Maybe if we speak it’ll all pop like a balloon and we’ll be fighting again._

But until then Sebastian is surging the last inch forward and he’s pressed so deep into Jim that Jim can’t seem to breathe right. Neither of them is going to last and they both know it. From the helpless growl against Jim’s lips when he’s finally seated, Sebastian’s used all his self-control up.

When he starts to move the withdrawal makes Jim moan and clutch at him, but Sebastian makes up for it with a brutal thrust that slams Jim back against the table and they’re probably _both_ going to have bruises on their hips tonight. Jim’s breaths are choked, Sebastian’s fucking into him with hard short thrusts and he can’t tell if he’s pleading out loud or in his head, _Sebastian, please, I need you, I need you, don’t leave_. There’s no real kiss, anymore, just slack mouths and heavy breaths and the overwhelming pleasure of Sebastian claiming him.

Jim clutches at his arms, at his back, at his hips, drawing him ever closer.

_If I could make us one person –_

_If I could sew myself inside you –_

_If I could fix it –_

He fights his orgasm desperately, forcing it off as long as he can, because Jim knows that this could be the last time they’ll touch and he’s willing to never come, not ever, so long as it means Sebastian stays here with him.

In the end, it’s a pointless struggle. There’s no escaping the too-quick build of climax and even if he could Sebastian is already losing rhythm above him, already going tensed and strained and mindless. Clawing at control, Jim feels himself arch backwards, hears the desperate pant of Sebastian’s name on his lips, knows he can’t hold on anymore.

_No, please, just a little more –_

He screams in frustration and digs his fingernails into Sebastian’s arm so hard they leave thin lines of red, but it’s too late, and he’s coming.

An unforgiving burst of pleasure, like an explosion.

His mind wiped clean and blank, and then that’s it.

It’s all over.


	7. The Misadventure of Mr. Holmes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian Moran goes to boot camp, where he meets a young British official that has very different ideas about how he's going to use his newfound skills.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I left you a note at the end bbys <3 see you there <3

**Six Months Later**

Sebastian takes another drag of the cigarette he’s finishing on one of the picnic benches outside the mess hall, right under the no-smoking sign. Ten feet in front of him, the rest of his would-be sniper unit are standing at attention.

Having been rejected from the long-range marksman program for a truly _appalling_ performance on the final exam, Sebastian is no longer required to stand in the line. He’s been let go, declined a job in the regular infantry, and is only waiting around for two things; a cab, and the end of a surprise inspection that apparently doesn’t care whether or not he’s still part of the military.

It’s hot as the devil’s ass outside and the orderly line of soldiers in front of him is dripping sweat. Sebastian smiles and leans back a little, into the shade. The man who used to run beside him in the mornings gives him a death glare, acting for the whole group since he’s the closest.

They’d sincerely like to kill him at this point. Sebastian had embarrassed them all effortlessly in training and drills, sucked-up to the commanding officers and been borderline neurotic about making sure his bed was neat. Only to throw the final exam, possibly just so he didn’t have to stand at attention when it was a hundred degrees in the shade.

None of them have guessed, of course.

_All for you, Jim._

\--------------

He’s curled up on the floor when Sebastian comes down the stairs carrying the only bag a recruit is permitted take to basic. It’s heavy and the thick canvas is cutting into his hand.

He leaves it by the front door and kneels down in front of Jim. “Won’t you say goodbye?”

“I told you not to go,” Jim’s voice is muffled, buried in his palms. “They’ll break you. They will.” Sebastian tries to be gentle, but prying Jim’s hands away from his face takes some strength and his grip has to be tight.

“They won’t.”

Jim’s face, when it appears, is twisted up into his disdainful glare. Framed by Sebastian’s fingers wrapped around his wrists, it triggers a spreading warmth over Sebastian’s chest.

_Cute when you’re mad, boss._

_Wish I could take you to bed. Push your buttons until you scream._

_Kiss you until you scream a little different._

“They WILL!” Jim snaps, and Sebastian smiles, wanting to run a hand through Jim’s messy hair to smooth it. He would, if he was willing to let go of Jim’s wrists.

“They can’t. Listen to me.” Jim pouts, sullen. He doesn’t pull away. Sebastian takes this as a sign to continue. “They can't. If I was alone, maybe, but not now. Not like this.”

“You don't even - you don't _know_ -!”

“Neither do you. In the dream –“ Jim scowls, but Sebastian powers through. Despite practicality and the pain of saying goodbye, what they’re really arguing about is a nightmare and Sebastian knows it. “You said I didn't remember you. So - give me something, then. So I _can't_ forget. You’re so scared, change the fucking possibilities.”

“There's nothing I could give you that won't be lost.”

“Yes,” Sebastian corrects him, and lets go of his wrists. “There is. There's a knife on the table.”

Jim’s hands drop heavy into his lap and Sebastian falls a little in love with the way his lashes frame his wide, startled eyes.

\--------------

 

The mess hall door slams open and then shut again, the soldiers in front of Sebastian snapping smartly to attention as their Staff Sergeant walks onto the field. Following him, sweating a little more heavily than the men in uniform, is an overweight young man in a well-tailored suit. He’s got a satyr’s face lined finely with pudge, and Sebastian wonders if he knows about the premature bald spot already evident in his hair.

_Probably. Looks like a vain son of a bitch._

Sebastian takes another drag and kills the butt on the table beside him. Pudgy Satyr sends him a disapproving glance, then another, more searching look. Sebastian feels – with an unpleasant lurch –  a sort of twisted familiarity. It’s the same dissection stare Jim gives Sebastian when he’s reading Sebastian’s mind. The man’s face may be soft, but those eyes are cold and hard and Sebastian can feel himself mercilessly weighed in judgement.

“These are the candidates, Mr. Holmes.” Sebastian lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding when the Staff Sergeant’s words distract Pudgy Satyr – _Mr. Holmes_ – and that penetrating gaze slides off him and refocuses with a mild blink on the nine soldiers at attention in the line.

“Why are there only nine, Staff?” Holmes asks, after a polite pause. His tone is just as reasonable and unassuming, but there’s a quiet and obvious threat underneath it. Sebastian thinks of a soft glove over an iron fist, a dagger piercing his spine in the dark.

_This is bad._

“The last man failed, Sir. Couldn’t shoot under pressure.”

Holmes hums noncommittally and he spares the line one more quick glance before turning away. “The two gentlemen at the end, if you would. And,” Holmes’s voice hasn’t raised or sped and he’s still sweating uncomfortably in his expensive suit, but Sebastian feels fear up his neck like fire. There’s nothing silly about that bald spot now – not with those eyes. Not now that Holmes is looking at him and saying, “This man, here.”

\------------------

Jim’s weight settles heavily across his thighs. One hand traces down Sebastian’s bare torso, considering, and Sebastian shuts his eyes.

“Where?” Jim asks, but Sebastian just shakes his head.

The knife bites in over his hipbone. It’s surprisingly difficult to tell what Jim’s doing, only that it hurts. There’s an electric burst of pain each time the knife slides a little further, and Sebastian can feel each catch and slip in his skin as Jim carves. Piecing together the overall picture would require impossible concentration.

His breath is light and shallow past his gritted teeth and when Jim pulls back he keeps his eyes shut and says, “Go over that deeper.”

The second time hurts more than the first. Logically, Jim’s just retracing the same wounds, but the burn of it seems to spread outwards until his entire hip feels over-sensitized and raw.

Like Jim is flaying him.

The second time Jim pulls back Sebastian can feel blood trickling down his side and onto the floor. His teeth are aching from clenching together.

“Again,” he says, and Jim obeys.

The third time is simply a trial of endurance. Sebastian wills himself not to scream or move or ask Jim to stop. It seems to take forever. When it’s finally over, the side Jim’s carving is slick all the way to the floor and uncomfortably stuck to the hardwood.

“Will it scar?” He grinds out through his teeth, and above him there’s a soft, indistinct noise. It could be pity.

Sebastian doesn’t open his eyes.

A thin fingertip traces over the lines of the knife, smearing blood on both their skins.

_JM._

“It’ll scar.”

“Tell me what we’ll do when I come home,” Sebastian says, because he needs to hold on to something while he’s gone.

“We'll get out of this place. Go... move to London. I'll have the empire complete and... We’ll go on assignments and kill together...” Jim’s voice sounds like it’s breaking.

Sebastian chokes out a laugh. Even to him it’s bitter and terrified. “Tell me we'll buy the biggest fuck-off house in the city with blood money and no one will ever know who we used to be.”

A cool hand cups his cheek, sticky and wet, and Jim’s thumb strokes a thick red streak over his cheekbone.  “I'll let you pick it. Whatever you want.”

“Tell me we'll get a bed that's far too big even for both of us. We'll kill anyone who crosses us.”

“It'll be big enough for 4 people but we'll never let anyone else in it. We'll kill them before they have the chance to cross us.”

“Promise me, Jim.”

_Promise me I won’t break._

_Promise me I’m coming home._

_Promise me we’re not going to die pointless and forgotten._

_Promise me a short bloody life and promise me it’ll be with you._

“I promise.”

\--------------------

“Sir,” The Staff Sergeant says, hesitant, afraid to cross a superior. “He’s the one that failed…”

“Yes, I’m aware.” Holmes hasn’t done anything as undignified as pointing, but his eyes are locked on Sebastian’s. Sebastian sits forward on the picnic table, wishing his cab had come just a little faster. “And his scores for the rest of the training…?”

“Um… Well,” – Checking his records – “Perfect.”

“Of course they were.”

Sebastian clamps down hard on his expression and feels his face go rigid and determined. The side of Holmes’s mouth quirks in an understated smile, and Sebastian wonders briefly if he could survive murdering the official with nine trained snipers standing not ten feet away.

_Probably not._

“But, the final test is designed to weed out…”

Mycroft interrupts before the Staff Sergeant can finish. “Staff, if you wanted to receive the finest training the British military could offer, but you _didn’t_ want to be messily shot, what would you do? _Ah._ That’s right,” Sebastian glares at Holmes, murder in his eyes and his body a rigid line of muscle. But the fat _fuck_ just smiles back like they’re standing in a deep freeze instead of the blazing sun. “You’d fail immediately after discerning there was no more to learn.”

Sebastian uncoils from the picnic table, unable to do nothing. Despite the difference in physicality, he and the overweight official are almost of a height, and Sebastian is unable to loom over him. Holmes’s small smile tugs wider again, like this is a perfectly predictable and childish reaction. Sebastian wants badly to gut him.

“I _refuse._ You can't _draft_ me. We have the option to opt out at –“

Holmes cuts him off smoothly, without ever raising his voice. “You’re the best man here, Mr. Moran, you’re well aware of it. I don't know who you're training for, but it wouldn't take me even the better part of the afternoon to find out if I took an interest.” He tugs a silk handkerchief out of his pocket, wipes the sweat from his brow, and tucks it back away. Sebastian’s movement forward is aborted when Holmes continues, simply, “You _will_ go, or I _will_ take an interest.”

_Jim._

Sebastian’s eyes narrow. “You’d never find him in a million years. And if you did, I’d –“ He stops himself just in time. Threatening Holmes – boot camp flunk-out or not – could land him in jail.

_Jim’d hate that._

Holmes smiles like a cat licking cream.

“I think you'll find we can do whatever we wish, Mister Moran, especially to someone like you.” His cold eyes are level and utterly inhuman, and Sebastian knows that if Mycroft wanted to he could find all Sebastian’s weaknesses. He has a vivid mental image of those swollen fingers prying open his ribs, cracking them like crab’s legs to get at the meat of secrets within.

Sebastian feels like he’s drowning. Grasping at straws, he tries limply, “We're supposed to go home now - until we're assigned –“ Thinking of Jim, and the empire. Jim’d be able to hide him, if only he could get home.

But Mycroft just smiles that knowing smile. “There are barracks on-site. You will stay there.”

“A phone call, at least…”

_This can’t be legal._

_This can’t be happening._

“Yes, I think we might manage that. Staff –“ Mycroft turns away, finally, takes the Staff Sergeant’s clipboard and makes a few changes in elegant blue script. “I assume you’ll have him for the standard tour – four years out, and in Afghanistan I should think.” The Staff Sergeant looks as stunned as Sebastian, accepting his clipboard back with automatic numbness. Mycroft nods at him reassuringly, returns his pen, and turns back towards the mess hall.

“I want the call completely off the record,” Sebastian snaps before Mycroft can leave, because it’s all that’s left to ask for. There’s a hollow, icy horror threaded through him like poison. “Nobody listens in. No recordings.” Mycroft hesitates, turns back to Sebastian. There’s an insincere sadness on his face that Sebastian knows precedes a denial. It’s too much. Back to the wall, Sebastian straightens and snarls at him, flat and furious, “Do you really think I went through the trouble of embarrassing all these other idiots to fail the test for fun? Give me a phone call and I'll do my tour without incident.”

There’s a naked challenge in his eyes.

_You think you can read me, do it._

_Tell me I have nothing to threaten you with._

_Tell me I’m not still the most dangerous man here._

Mycroft looks at him consideringly for a long moment then, slowly, nods. “Yes. I’ll make sure you have a secure line. Staff, if you could show Mister Moran to the phone in the office…” They both know he’s lying. Of course the line will be tapped. It’s what Jim would do.

\----------------

When Jim picks up, without preamble, Sebastian says, “I can’t be sure this call is clean.” There’s a little pause, and the hiss of the long-distance line.

“I understand.”

Jim’s voice takes Sebastian like a fist to the gut, even cut through with distortion. He forgets, for a moment, what he was supposed to say. “It’s good to hear your voice,” he settles on instead, because it is.

_Four years._

“And yours, kitten, of course…” Jim is drawling, bored. He must be smiling, but Sebastian can’t see. “Are you on your way home to me?”

Deep breath.

_I’m so sorry._

“I… Won’t be. Coming home.”

Over the phone he can’t hear the hiss of surprise he expects. He wonders how much of their voices are getting lost. “What…?” Jim breathes, so quietly as to be nearly static.

“Some sort of judgement call. Man came by. Said even though I failed the tests I was… just hiding how good I was. They’re sending me out anyways.” For some reason, Sebastian’s legs don’t seem to be supporting him properly. He leans against the wall and grips the cord of the phone hard. “I have a name.”

“W- _What_? How could he –“ Sebastian imagines he can hear the cogs of Jim’s brain grind to work. “Give me the name. _Now._ ”

_If anyone could save us, it’d be you._

“Holmes. His name is Holmes. And that’s all I know. It’s – it’s four years. The tour.”

“ _Four YEARS!?_ ” The scream cracks through the phone like a whip and Sebastian makes a choked noise between a laugh and a sob.

“We're supposed to get a visit home before we're shipped off. I think he knew I'd run.”

“But you...” There’s distress in Jim’s voice, plain and clear, and if Sebastian didn’t want to be home before he does now just to see the expression that goes with that voice. “You have to come back!”

“I _will._ ”

“ _NOW_!”

Sebastian laughs at the frantic cry, because this is breaking his heart, because he loves Jim, because there’s nothing to do but laugh or he’ll snap in two. “Take it up with Holmes. I'll be home, I swear. I haven't forgotten.”

His fingers fall to his hip, trace lightly over Jim’s initials.

There’s a silence, a long silence, the kind of silence Jim used to use to put Sebastian on edge. Now Sebastian thinks he just doesn’t know what to say. When he speaks again, his voice is low and pleading. “Sebastian…”

Sebastian takes a deep breath. “I don’t know if they’ll let me call again.”

“I’ll – I’ll write.”

“Don’t. They’d open them.” Another long silence. Sebastian rests his forehead against the wall, shuts his eyes, tries to send himself home to Jim with the sheer force of how badly he wants it. “I don’t know how to say goodbye. Jim…”

As soon as it leaves his lips his heart stops. Jim hisses, angry, and this one Sebastian hears clearly over the line. “Ssst -!”

_The line is bugged, and I’ve given Holmes his name._

Something shatters in Sebastian’s heart, and it rings in his ears like an explosion. He laughs, this time with real amusement instead of holding back tears.

_Failed you again. Stupid, ordinary kitten after all._

Self-hatred in his stomach gives him strength and he pushes himself off the wall. “ _Fuck._ Good thing you've a common name. Right, then. Last thing I say to you in four years and it's a mistake. Perfect. Just another fuck up. Well, if you _can_ replace me, Jim -”

“ _No_ \- “

Sebastian suddenly doesn’t want to hear it. Before Jim can start the next word, he puts the phone back on the wall. It settles with a click like a coffin nail.

He stares at it for a breath. Then he straightens his shoulders, adjusts his shirt, and walks smartly out to be processed. He is expressionless, completely calm, and only a little pale.

Inside his head, he is screaming.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay sorry that was bad I know *hugs you* It's okay don't have feels it'll all be over soon although it might get way sadder first
> 
> Look I even drew you a thing to make up for how sad this is about to be  
> [ [Link] ](http://goingbadly.tumblr.com/post/55148580549/these-are-the-twist-and-growl-versions-of-jim)  
> basically it is how I see our boys okay sorry again kay bye
> 
> now if you fuckers don't comment I will get someone to hold my flower
> 
> you understand me


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sebastian and Jim are finally reunited. I may have lied when I said it would get happier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please please please read the end notes! We have some important ground to cover down there <3 But spoilers, too. <3 So I'll meet you when you're done reading.

**Five Years Later**

Sebastian Moran steps off the plane, settles his bag a little more comfortably on his shoulder, and walks across the hot tarmac of the military airport without a pause. Around him, soldiers reunite with family and friends, tearful, hugging and cupping each other’s faces in relieved joy.

_You came home, look how much you’ve grown, look how tanned you are._

With each step, his dog-tags tap the standard-issue green t-shirt he’s wearing stretched tight across the new muscles on his chest. At eighteen, Sebastian had been lean muscle and golden hair, had moved like a cat and grinned when he thought people could see. Twenty-three suits him better. He’s filled out, packed on mass when there was nothing better to do in his off time than exercise and sleep. His tour has left a series of fine scars over his arms and several thicker ones on his ribs, burned a farmer’s tan into his skin and faded his short-cropped hair to nearly white. His expression is so guarded as to be blank.

He moves like a tiger, now.

When he’s cleared all the checkpoints and started out across the civilian road beside the base, a car rolls up to him; black, with chrome detailing that looks understated, elegant and outrageously expensive. The window rolls down. Sebastian leans over.

“Whose car?” he asks. His voice has gone scratchy, rough from disuse. Sebastian Moran was not popular in Afghanistan.

“My boss said you’d know to get in,” comes the response.

“Did he now.” There’s a click as the doors unlock. Sebastian slides into the back seat, tossing his bag down beside him, and the car pulls away from the curb. The driver has curly brown hair that froths on his neck and tense shoulders. He looks like a rabbit with his back to a hawk. Sebastian lets the silence draw out for the pleasure of watching those bony shoulders creep nervously upwards. It’s a good ten minutes before he speaks again. “What’s he like?”

“W-Who, sir?”

“It’s Moran. No _sir._ And I mean your boss.”

A nervous laugh. The driver’s neck is near buried in his shoulders. “He’s terrifying, he is.”

“Is he. Tell me about him.”

“I – I can’t. Sir. Moran. It’s – it’s his rules, I – “ Sebastian considers this. The man seems genuinely afraid.

_Of Jim?_

_My Jim._

_Scaring people._

Sebastian smiles to himself.

“If you’re not going to be useful,” he grunts at the driver, “Just wake me when we get there.”

He props his shoes obnoxiously against the back of the chair, tucks his chin in to his chest, and rapidly falls asleep.

\---------------

Sebastian jerks back awake as they grind to a stop on a dirt road. The sun has started to fade outside the windows, although there’s nothing visible but sky and fields and the faint glow of the city against the horizon.

_The middle of fucking nowhere._

He pushes himself upright. The driver is stammering something about his instructions, how he’s to leave Moran here. Moran ignores him, hauls his bag out of the back seat and drops it into the dirt. A small puff of dust plumes upwards, and Sebastian gives a curt nod of dismissal to the driver that forestalls any more attempts to explain what’s going on.

_Jim is doing whatever he wants._

_Save your explanation._

_He didn’t explain to me before and it never changed anything._

He digs in his pocket for a cigarette and stares out over the grass as he lights it. There’s a cloud of dirt rising in the distance, someone driving closer even as the car that brought him here kicks up gravel pulling away. Sebastian watches the new vehicle close the distance. Another expensive black car, with tinted windows and shining chrome dulled by the dust of the road.

He takes a drag, sees the ember light up his knuckles in warm orange that highlights a scar on his forefinger. The approaching car is going recklessly fast, even for a deserted road. Sebastian notices with calm detachment that his hands are shaking.

_120 k. Easily._

_It’s you._

_Isn’t it?_

He snubs the cigarette at his feet without finishing it.

The car rolls up, finally, and dust flies into the air. Sebastian is finding it hard to breathe, although that might not entirely be the fault of air quality. After a long pause, there’s an electronic whir, and the driver’s side window creeps downwards. Jim is grinning. His mirrored aviators have slid down his nose so his eyes are just barely visible, raking up and down Sebastian hungrily.

Sebastian’s heart stops.

Jim is older. There are fine lines forming on the edges of his mouth and across his brow, where he’s scowled too often and earned himself creases. His jaw is thinner, cheekbones starkly defined in a gaunter, narrower face. Through the open window, Sebastian can see the hard lines of muscle in his shoulders – a swimmers body, lean and strong like a whip or the edge of a knife. James Moriarty looks like a killer.

But his eyes are the same. Large, dark, and almost incandescent in the otherwise unremarkable world, framed in a thick haze of indecently long lashes.

“Oh _hello_ , handsome,” he sings. “ _Do_ get in.”

Sebastian doesn’t hesitate even long enough to speak. On his way around the car to the passenger side he slams his bag in the trunk. When he settles in his seat, Jim twists to look at him and opens his mouth like he’s going to say something.  
 _I don’t think so._

_Not after so long, not now, I can’t._

_Not another fucking delay._

“Shut up,” Sebastian growls, voice rough and hard. There’s a thin, barely-there undercurrent of honest desperation. An average observer wouldn’t hear it under the hostility of his tone, but if anybody’s going to catch how long he’s been wanting, it’s Jim. He reaches over, grabs a handful of Jim’s soft cotton shirt and drags him across to the passenger seat. He gets a bare glimpse of Jim’s eyes, widening, and then their lips are crushed together.

Jim tastes of coffee and sugar. Sebastian kisses him hard and fast, violating Jim’s mouth with his tongue in ruthless thrusts that leave no room for disagreement. The bruising pressure of their meeting makes his heart start back up again, racing instantly. Jim is pushing back, tongue slick and darting like he’s relearning Sebastian’s mouth again by feel.

He pulls away altogether too soon, but Sebastian is gratified to see Jim’s chest heave on the intake as he pants.

“I missed you,” Sebastian tells Jim, what he thinks is softly.

“All the more reason for us to leave, darling. _Now._ ”

Sebastian forces himself to relax back into his chair. If he was hoping for more from their first meeting back, he’s not going to be the first to show it. There’s a grating noise as the tires work against the gravel, then the car starts off down the road again. Sebastian spares a glance at the speedometer. They’re going nearly 130 now. He can feel Jim glancing at him at odd intervals, the prickling on his skin of being watched like a caress. He wants to look back. Sebastian wants to stare, just drink Jim in after so long a drought, but he’s not really sure if he’s allowed. Jim’s presence feels new and strange on his skin. When he tries to speak the words dry up in his mouth and he can’t seem to push them past his teeth. It’s lucky they’re not going far. There’s a drive only a few miles down that Jim takes a sharp reckless right into, then his manor is swelling in the windshield.

It’s a large, sprawling house, surprisingly modern for the rural setting. It looks like the country home of a southern cotton farmer as lived in by an evil dictator; classic white paint and columns contrasting with the thick gleaming metal rims of the windows and the tell-tale dullness of bullet-proof glass. Sebastian loves it immediately. From the front and the placement of the eves, he can tell it’s defensible from all sides, offering clear views of the sweeping lawns interrupted by only a few decorative trees. Two snipers in this building could hold off an army.

“I SAID you could pick,” Jim grins as they pull up, “But I just couldn’t _wait._ You understand.” A beat, not nearly long enough for Sebastian to reply, and Jim’s face falls. “We can always buy another one.”

Sebastian barks out a laugh and it surprises him as much as Jim. It’s been a while since something as simple as words made him laugh. The car squeals to a halt and he unfolds out of the passenger seat, looking at the house. More selling points pop up in a concentrated scan – security, cameras, everything short of murder holes on the porch. Despite the slender columns and intricate woodwork, the house is a fortress.

Sebastian shifts his duffel bag over his shoulder, suddenly nervous. He stares up at the door, and wonders if he’ll be allowed to go in without knocking.

“Well don’t just _stand_ there then,” Jim calls, leaving the car in the middle of the driveway and sliding over the hood. He’s up the porch to the door, taking the steps two at a time, before Sebastian can blink. “Come _in._ ”

\----------------

The house is just as eclectic inside as outside. The same thin veneer of civility has been applied to the interior design; it’s only after looking at a very traditionally decorated dining room for a moment that Sebastian realizes the chandelier is adorned with human skulls. In all the rooms, a conservative and elegant sense of design has been put at guerilla war with a madman. Tasteful burgundy wallpaper is patterned subtly with anatomical hearts; the living room couch has a short leg propped up by what looks like a femur; there’s a collection of pinned spiders on the wall of the office; and of course, a _very_ large gun cage on the main floor that Jim flings open to display with all the flair of a ringmaster.

“Very nice,” Sebastian says finally, as they’re looking out from the back porch over the yard. “But I seem to remember something about a bed.” They haven’t spoken much. Neither of them seems entirely comfortable, yet. Sebastian is half-convinced that if Jim’s nails weren’t manicured he’d be biting them.

At Sebastian’s mention of a bed, though, Jim’s face splits in a wide grin and he throws himself off the railing back towards the house. Without an inch of hesitation, he reaches his hand back for Sebastian. Sebastian grabs it eagerly, grip tight, squeezing in nervous excitement.

When you have something for a long time, you stop thinking about it. People who wear glasses don’t see the frames in the corners of their vision. A wedding ring ceases to be noticeable at all when you’ve been married twenty years. The stereo you never use fades back into the wall.

Sebastian has forgotten the callouses left by years of gripping his rifle, but when Jim’s smooth hands press against his, he remembers. Fear stops the haze of bedroom thoughts like a snap, and he’s not alone in that. Jim’s already paused. With his heart pressed against the back of his tongue Sebastian sees Jim push his sunglasses up into his hair and pull Sebastian’s palm closer.

He bends over it, and there’s a fragility to the moment that Sebastian hates. He hates the way Jim’s eyelashes flutter half closed in concentration, he hates the way Jim is tracing his callouses with gentle fingertips, he hates the way the pad of Jim’s thumb pauses over a scar on the outside of his index finger. Most of all he hates the hollow fear in his chest and the little voice that’s whispering, _I wonder if I had calloused hands in your nightmare._  Now that Jim is looking Sebastian remembers all his blemishes with painful insecurity – nicks on his fingers that filled with sand and healed wrong, scrapes over his tendons that traced his hands in white where they’re not tanned from working in the hot sun. His knuckles have gotten awkward and large from cracking them in the mornings, fingernails sharply squared off according to military tradition.

Jim turns his hand over and back again, then wraps his slender fingers around Sebastian’s wrist without another word and pulls him towards the bedroom.

“Have my hands passed inspection?” Sebastian asks, just inside the door. Jim lets his wrist go and shoves him forwards, towards the bed.

“I’m learning,” he says.

 _I don’t want you to,_ Sebastian thinks, and _I want us to not have changed._ But he’s beginning to wonder if there’s anything that’s the same.

He strips his t-shirt off over his head, drops it on the floor. Jim steps forward, places his hands on Sebastian’s wrists, and slides them up Sebastian’s arms. His palms are hot and dry and he is perfectly expressionless. Sebastian can feel the pull of his skin every time Jim finds the tight lines of scars, a reminder of the way the war has marked him.

_Don’t let this change anything._

_If you don’t want me now I don’t know what I’ll do._

“You know me already,” Sebastian tells him, with just a fluttering edge of panic.

“You’re different now,” Jim replies, and Sebastian feels those fingers on his scars like they’re stirring bleak horror into his heart.

“No,” Sebastian whispers, and he’s pleading.

Jim’s hands cup his face, gentle and sad, like he’s made of spun glass. Or maybe like he’s already shattered, and Jim is trying to hold him together. “Oh, you are,” he says, unwontedly soft. His thumb strokes along Sebastian’s cheekbone, and he looks – he looks like he is _mourning._ “Look at your eyes. Struggle and hardship, Tiger. Reaction conditioning. Pain... Longing…”

“Don’t forget death,” Sebastian tells him, bitter.

“I wouldn’t forget _that._ ”

Sebastian grasps desperately at straws. “It was experience. I'll be capable of working for you now.”

His voice, hard and flat to hide his panic, sounds a long way off from the fragile school boy begging for a chance to not be alone. Jim’s hands leave his face, slide palm flat down his bare chest.  He isn’t meeting Sebastian’s eyes.

“Jim,” Sebastian starts again, and that fluttering fear like butterfly wings is edging closer in. It feels claustrophobic, and Sebastian’s hands are shaking as he places them over Jims. “Don't look at me like that,” he tries, and his voice is uneven. Jim bows his head and says nothing. “Don't look at me like I'm _already dead!”_

“Aren't you though?” Jim shoots back, his voice quiet and expressionless. “Go on, tell me that you aren’t all numb and broken. Poor _Tiger._ ”

Sebastian’s grip goes tight on Jim’s hands. He knows he’s hurting him, but he can’t bring himself to care.

_How could you?_

“I fought through. For you. I did whatever I had to do to come home alive and in one piece and all of it, _all of it_ was for you.” Jim doesn’t say anything. His brows raise, mocking, and Sebastian snarls at him. “After all that, you don't think I'm _me._ ”

“Now, what did you _want_ from me, Sebastian? I told you, and _told_ you, you shouldn't have gone. Maybe if you weren’t so s _tupid_ –“

Sebastian’s voice goes dark and deadly calm. “I went to war for you,” he says, wanting the weight of guilt to settle back on Jim’s shoulders. “I dragged myself through hell thinking about how we'd be when I got back. And my reward is - this.” He gestures derisively, encompassing Jim, encompassing his steady refusal to really _look_ at Sebastian.

“Your reward is that I kept my promises.  I’m still _here_ , you know. Don't expect everything to be _perfect_ and oh-so-honey- _wonderful_ as if you'd never LEFT!”

Sebastian doesn’t appreciate the sudden jump in Jim’s voice the way he used to. Before it was a reminder of Jim’s unpredictable perfection and now it’s a slap in the face.

_Manic, erratic, changeable Jim._

_How could I think you’d wait for me?_

For just a fleeting moment, Sebastian looks helpless and alone. His expression is vulnerable in a way that it hasn’t been in years. He doesn’t realize, but he looks eighteen again. Jim’s eyes widen. But it’s only a moment, and then Sebastian’s jaw sets, and he’s the tanned soldier instead of the lost child. “You kept your promises for an idealised version of me at eighteen and now that I've come back older you no longer want me. Was your emotion that fragile?”

“When did I EVER say I didn't-“ He breaks off to glare. Sebastian wants desperately for him to finish, but he doesn’t. Instead, he raises his chin and steps a little closer, yanking his hands back angrily. “Never assume, Moran. You’re not terribly good at guessing.”

Sebastian wonders how many times his heart can stop in the space of a day before it becomes seriously unhealthy.

_In the dream, in the dream –_

_I was never_ Moran _to you._

“Since when do you call me by my last name?”

“Since you _piss me off_!”

There’s a breathless pause. Jim looks like he’s sucking on sour candy. His face twists, and Sebastian wonders what he wishes he could take back.

_All of it._

_Six years._

_Meeting me?_

They stare at each other in betrayed silence. Together, they could have been anything. With Jim at his shoulder and the war in his trigger finger, Sebastian could have been the second most dangerous man in London and lover to the first. But they’re not shoulder to shoulder, now, not chest to chest, not locked in a desperate embrace or tied together in sweetness. Now they’re facing each other across six inches, five years. It feels like a mile. “Fine,” Sebastian says, “Fine.” Without bothering to grab his t-shirt, he heads for the door.

He pauses once.

Just to grab his duffle.

“Where do you think you're going?” Jim asks, voice breaking. At the last, he is weak. He sounds like something is strangling him, and maybe something is.

“I'm not your Sebastian anymore. You look at me, you see your stupid dream. Moran. This house was a shared fantasy, and you shared it with a dead man.” He walks out of the house the same way he’d walked to the war; calm, and steady, and wounded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! /So./ Thank you so much for reading! Oh my god. I can't thank you enough. And just so you know, every /single/ comment and kudo means /so much/ to me and I didn't even think I could finish this until you people started responding. That's wonderful. Keep that up.
> 
> First of all I want to direct you to /this/ - because if you're not crying yet, you will be - [ I Will Follow You Into The Dark (MorMor Edition)](http://thecandycoatedtrickster.tumblr.com/post/50039581589/someday-i-will-use-my-recording-studio-for).
> 
> Secondly, I need to give some thanks - both my lovely betas Cia and Mie, of course, but mostly [ Miescha, ](http://thecandycoatedtrickster.tumblr.com/)who gave voice to Jim far better than I ever could. Darling. This was wonderful. Thank you for everything.
> 
> Thirdly, /THIS IS NOT THE END OF THIS STORY./  
> Wait, what?  
> Yes! Twist and Growl ends here because it makes narrative sense. But there is a second, and almost as long, fic coming for this version of Jim and Sebastian. The break is here because honestly I didn't want to write a longer fic at once.  
> THANKS FOR READING THIS HUGE NOTES THING OKAY ILU LISTEN TO THE SONG THAT'S ALL I THINK OKAY THANKS AGAIN OMG OKAY WELL HERE'S A FLOWER YOU'RE BEAUTIFUL *PATS YOUR HEAD*


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